Surveys & polls

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Podcast: Once again, why is religion a 'green frog' topic in many mainstream newsrooms?

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Podcast: Once again, why is religion a 'green frog' topic in many mainstream newsrooms?

The news editor at the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette — my first real newsroom gig — had an interesting name for for a certain kind of over-the-top reader who would call to complain about the news.

It didn’t really matter if the reader’s criticism was right or wrong. It was all about tone and, especially, whether or not the reader was complaining about a subject that editors took seriously.

My editor referred to these callers as “green frogs.”

You see, many of these adamant readers were complaining about issues linked to religion, morality and politics. (At that time, the born-again Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the Religious Right was just starting to organize.)

As the complaining went on and on, the news editor’s eyes would glaze and he would put the caller on hold. That’s when I would hear the following, since everyone knew that I wanted to become a religion-beat pro: “Mattingly, there’s a green frog on the phone! You talk to them.”

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), in which host Todd Wilken asked a question that, in various forms, I have heard a thousand times over the past 40+ years.

Yes, that would be: Why don’t journalists “get” religion?

However, there are many variations. Why don’t editors hire trained religion-beat reporters? Why do newsrooms mess up the basic facts in some many religion stories? Why do many, not all, journalists IGNORE essential religion issues and themes in important news and events? Why do religious issues show up so often in studies probing media bias? Long ago, back when journalists in major newsrooms dared to fill out surveys about their work, why did half of pros in elite newsrooms write the word “none” in the space describing their religious faith?

I could go on and on. My chosen wording is this: Why don’t newsroom managers handle religion news with the same old-school journalism methodology — hire reporters who have training and experience on this beat and let them do their work — that they apply to subjects that they respect (such as politics, sports, law, arts, business, etc.)?


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Inside a tense huddle in Baltimore: U.S. Catholic bishops wrestle with Vatican criticism

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Inside a tense huddle in Baltimore: U.S. Catholic bishops wrestle with Vatican criticism

The U.S. Catholic bishops are gathered in Baltimore, once again, which means that reporters are listening to waves of friendly words in public, while trying to get bishops to be candid in the tiny windows of time when they are free to meet with outsiders.

The more tense the atmosphere, the smaller the windows of open discussion. Long ago, during meetings in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., several reporters (including moi) blocked the service door to the kitchen so that we could ask questions when bishops tried to slip out that back door.

The issue? Vatican efforts to discipline a bishop who was getting out of line on doctrinal issues. Back then, it was a progressive bishop who was in trouble with the pope.

Times change. Today, it’s doctrinal conservatives who are worried, since they are on the wrong side of trends in Rome. For more background, see my recent post: “Attention U.S. Catholic bishops: You are not allowed to say that this pope isn't Catholic.”

This early Associated Press report punches several crucial buttons:

BALTIMORE (AP) — Catholic leaders called for peace in a war-torn world and unity amid strife within their own clerical ranks on Tuesday, as U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore for their annual fall meeting.

The meeting came soon after two actions by Pope Francis that illustrated the divisive challenges facing the Catholic Church – removing one of his harshest conservative critics from his role as bishop of Tyler, Texas, and releasing a document conveying a more welcoming stance to transgender people than the official positions of the U.S. bishops.

The key is that Catholics everywhere are supposed to be talking more openly, bowing to the spirit of “synodality.” That is, of course, a reference to the first major meeting of the Synod on Synodality, which featured strong efforts to prevent participants from speaking to journalists or releasing texts of speeches or remarks that were not cleared by synod leaders chosen by Pope Francis.

The AP report turned to American politics, of course, and offered this “tsk, tsk” analysis:

The bishops elected Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas over a more prominent cultural warrior, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, as the new head of their committee on pro-life activities. The committee’s chair serves as the conference’s point-person in efforts against abortion, a top priority for the bishops.

Jamie Manson, head of Catholics for Choice, called it an ironic choice, given that Thomas serves in Ohio where Catholic groups “just spent more than $12 million fighting a losing battle against abortion access.” Ohio voters enshrined abortion rights by ballot amendment last week.


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

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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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What's happening to Polish Catholicism? This NYTimes story needs more religion stuff

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What's happening to Polish Catholicism? This NYTimes story needs more religion stuff

Every now and then, major news stories about religious trends in the real world actually have something to do with religion, as opposed to being driven by politics, alone.

I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine that.

Yes, it’s also possible for an important story about religion to involve factors other than “religion,” narrowly defined. These stories may involve economics, mass media, education and, yes, politics. Life is complex.

I thought about this when reading an important New York Times story the other day that ran with this double-decker headline:

Polish Bishop Resigns After Diocese Is Rocked by Sex Scandal

A priest in the bishop’s diocese was accused of holding a sex party in his church apartment that involved a male prostitute who lost consciousness.

Here is the long, but essential, overture for that:

A Polish bishop whose diocese has been badly tarnished by reports of a gay orgy involving priests and a prostitute resigned … , the latest in a long series of sexual and financial scandals in Poland’s Roman Catholic Church.

Grzegorz Kaszak, the bishop of Sosnowiec in southwestern Poland, announced his departure after one of his priests was placed under criminal investigation in connection with reports last month that he had organized a sex party during which a male prostitute lost consciousness from an overdose of erectile dysfunction pills.

Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal daily newspaper, reported in September that one of the priests at the gathering, held in a building belonging to the parish of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels in the town of Dabrowa Gornicza, had called an ambulance. Others at the party prevented paramedics from tending to the unconscious man, the paper reported, but the paramedics called the police and the priests relented.

The priest who organized the gathering in his church apartment, identified by the diocese only as Father Tomasz Z., gave a statement last month to Polish media that disputed details of what had happened, quibbling over the number of priests present at the time of the alleged sex party and saying that “it is worth reading what the definition of an orgy is.”


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Does America still defy the classic 'secularization theory' favored by sociologists?

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Does America still defy the classic 'secularization theory' favored by sociologists?

Journalists should be aware that 2023 turns out to be big for the much-discussed “secularization theory” framed by the 19th Century founders of sociology.

The nub of theory claims that economically advancing societies with improved education inevitably become more secular, largely because modern science explains matters formerly left to the religious realm.

The NYU Press states that its 2023 release “Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society” demonstrates “definitively that the secularization thesis is correct, and religion is losing its grip on societies worldwide.” Steve Bruce of the University of Aberdeen, author of the classic “Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory” (Oxford, 2011), blurbs that this new title “will be the defining text on the undeniable proof” that supports the concept.

The three co-authors of “Beyond Doubt,” all experts, are Ryan Cragun (University of Tampa), Isabella Kasselstrand (also at Aberdeen), and Phil Zuckerman (founder of Pitzer College’s Secular Studies program). They take on such noted U.S. critics of the theory as Christian Smith, Rodney Stark, and the late Peter Berger. Though such theorizing has focused on the West, this book (which The Guy has yet to read) is distinctive in drawing together elaborate data from several dozen varied countries.

The United States, however, has long been a serious problem for the theory. It’s an educationally, economically and scientifically advanced culture that has persisted with a far more devout population than in, say, Western Europe or Canada.

Yes, but now, as the news media frequently remind us, 21st Century America has experienced a rapid and substantial increase in “nones” who tell pollsters they have no religious identity and are either atheist, agnostic, or — by far the largest category — “nothing in particular.” Their ranks have nearly doubled since 2007. And there other signs of sagging religious vitality.

It seems secularization has finally triumphed even in the United States.


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In 2023 America, organized religion has (this is not good news) become a luxury good

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In 2023 America, organized religion has (this is not good news) become a luxury good

I’m in absolutely no sense a biblical scholar. I’m nothing more than a lay preacher who was called by a local American Baptist congregation because I was willing to fill the pulpit each Sunday. I took about five courses in the Bible in undergraduate.

I don’t remember a lot about those courses, but a handful of things have stuck with me. Let me get just a little bit preachy for a second. (And forgive me for any heresies).

One idea that I just can never shake is that one of the central themes in the Gospel of Luke is the great reversal. It’s most succinctly stated in 13:30, “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

It’s all over the text. The Magnificat of Mary, “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.” (Luke 1:52). “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11) And, of course, “Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32.)

The way that I understand Christianity is that Jesus was especially concerned with people on the margins of society. The sick, the poor, and the outcasts were high on his priority list. Thus, churches (being the extension of Jesus’ ministry), should focus their efforts on those exact same people.

But the data says that is not happening. Just the opposite in fact.

Religion in the 21st Century America has become an enclave for people who have done everything “right.” They have college degrees and marriages and children and middle-class incomes. For those who don’t check all those boxes, religion is just not for them.

I’m going to stop quoting scripture now (not my strong suit) to describing the data (which is way more comfortable for me). The conclusions are unmistakable: religion has become a luxury good, and that’s leaving most of society on the fringes, yet again.

Let’s start with that old chestnut that I roll out from time to time — the basic relationship between education and religious disaffiliation.


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Trying to count religious believers in United States? Good luck with that ...

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Trying to count religious believers in United States? Good luck with that ...

QUESTION:

How many members do major U.S. religious groups have?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Well, that’s impossible to say with any accuracy since there’s no one agreed-upon statistical source and some groups do not collect or issue good numbers.

We do know two things for sure about the U.S. (1) It remains predominantly Christian despite a recent decline, and (2) There’s been notable growth in non-Christian religions through immigration and conversion.

Recently, some noteworthy new numbers about U.S. Christianity became available. We’ll review those below, but let’s begin with complexities regarding the major non-Christian faith groups.

Judaism is traditionally second in population size to Christianity. The American Jewish Population Project at Brandeis University reports there are 7,631,000 American Jews, children included, among which 4,873,000 are adults and “Jewish by religion” as opposed to a secular ethnic identity. That’s similar to the 7,387,992 ethnic total reported by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

A major report by the Pew Research Center, a go-to-source for surveys on American religion, said that as of 2020 there were “approximately” 5.8 million Jewish adults, of whom 4.2 million were “Jews by religion.” Then we can consult these two standard sources:

* The 3rd edition of the “World Christian Encyclopedia” (Edinburgh University Press), compiled by a study center at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, contains extensive information on all religions in all nations, not just Christianity and not just the United States. It counts 5.6 million Jews of all categories.

* The U.S. Religion Census, compiled once each decade by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, yielded 2020 data on 372 religious bodies posted here. With Jews, the Census primarily used groups’ own reports given to the Synagogue Studies Institute.


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Relevant numbers, right now: Culture wars are alive and well on college campuses

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Relevant numbers, right now: Culture wars are alive and well on college campuses

I write a lot about religion and politics.

That’s led to some speaking engagements about my research to a wide variety of groups. I wish I could list all the audiences I have spoken to but it’s really run the gamut. I’ve given talks to some of the most liberal Protestants in the United States, but also to Southern Baptist church planters. I’ve spoken to non-religious groups in a variety of contexts including major corporations and members of Congress.

One thing that I try to do when I’m asked to give a talk is show up before my scheduled engagement and get a sense of the room. I want to see what type of people are gathered, if they have any reading materials handed out to participants and eavesdrop a little on conversations happening among attendees. I need to figure out the political and theological viewpoints of folks before I plow through my material — which can sometimes cause friction.

I mean, I talk about religion and politics. It may not go over well with every attendee in every room.

I would like to think that we all do things like that in our own lives when we are confronted with a new environment. We need to get a lay of the land before we strategize about how we fit in.

That’s certainly the case with the college experience. I think most students want to desperately fit in (it’s something we all do), and one way to make that easier is to make sure your politics aligns with the politics of your local environment.

That’s really the point of this post — trying to understand the political climate of college campuses right now and how individuals fit in to those larger environments. I am using the terrific dataset from The FIRE that I’ve been exploring in several posts this month. Like prior sets of analysis, I restricted my sample to just 18-25 year old folks who are attending a college or university in the United States.

Let’s start with a basic, yet important, question: what is the political partisanship of young folks based on their religious affiliation?

Pretty clearly there are two groups with a strong contingent of Republicans.


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The rise of singleness and how organized religion is being impacted, big time

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The rise of singleness and how organized religion is being impacted, big time

A few months ago, I wrote a post about falling marriage rates and the possible link to religion: “Marriage rates are falling. Is the decline of religion to blame? (behind paywall).

But when I read over those graphs I think I had a big blind spot — gender.

Obviously marriage rates aren’t the same for men and women for a wide variety of reasons. For instance, an article in the New York Times in late July was focused on how online communities have sprouted up to help other women know that specific men they find on dating apps are safe to be around.

Dan Cox, from the American Enterprise Institute did some polling and found that younger women (18-29) were significantly more likely to report that they were single in 2022 compared to 2020 (45% vs 38%). And a book published in 2015 called, “Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game,” found that educated women just didn’t have that many options when it came to finding a potential mate because the share of men going to college has declined sharply in recent decades.

So, I wanted to explore that gender gap on marriage a bit. But also I wanted to see how all of that related back to religion.

I think it goes without saying that lots of people have found their current spouse at a house of worship. But is being single driving women further away from religion than unmarried men? These are questions worth some analysis and reflection.

Let’s start with the broadest question: are women more likely to report that they have never been married compared to men? 

In 2008, about 20% of all women in the sample reported that they had never been married — it was 30% of all men. That’s not a small gap and it’s persisted for the entire length of the Cooperative Election Study. Both trend lines have slowly edged up every year.

However, I would be remiss to point out that the line for women has stayed relatively stable beginning in about 2018 when 26-27% say that they were never married.

For men, the number continues to climb. In the most recent data collected from 2022, about 37% of men say that they have never been married. The overall conclusion is pretty unmistakable: singleness is on the rise for both men and women, but women are still 8-10 points less likely to never be married.

This is clearly a function of age, of course. Older people have just had more opportunities to get married compared to younger ones.


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