TV-Radio

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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

For decades, viewers have enjoyed the Japanese reality-TV series "Old Enough!" in which preschool children venture into the streets alone to run errands for their parents.

What if American women asked their live-in boyfriends to stop playing videogames, leave their couches and run errands? In the Saturday Night Life sketch "Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!" guest host Selena Gomez asked her helpless boyfriend of three years, played by cast member Mikey Day, to buy her eyeliner and two shallots.

This man-baby ends up in tears with a big bag of onions and "a blush palette for African-American women." The frustrated girlfriend says she may need a mid-morning glass of wine.

There was wisdom in that comedy, for pastors willing to see it, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"There's a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems," he said, reached by telephone.

"The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future."

The crisis is larger than lonely, under-employed and Internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing danger signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay.


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Please, NPR, get serious -- professional, even -- when covering religion/trans debates

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Please, NPR, get serious -- professional, even -- when covering religion/trans debates

Way back when, there was a time when National Public Radio was known for accurate, decent, cutting-edge religion stories.

But its most recent serious religion specialist, Tom Gjelten, retired last year. So that day is long gone, alas, judging from a mindless story about transgenderism and Christianity that came out this week, one completely lacking in terms of balance and serious research.

Now there are good ways to cover this divisive topic, with thoughtful voices on both sides of the debate. But the following story wasn't one of them.

PORTLAND, Ore.— Something as small as signs that say "men" and "women" on the bathrooms in a house of worship can shut the door to trans people.

"For me as a non-binary person, I've been to so many churches where they don't have a bathroom that I feel like I can use," says AJ Buckley, an Episcopal priest in Portland, Ore. "And so I'll just not go to the bathroom there."

Churches are tasked with living out the Bible's message both from the pulpit and in the pews. And it's hard to connect to spiritual concerns if people there to sing and pray literally can't be physically comfortable.

That's why Saint David of Wales Episcopal Church in Portland, where Buckley has been associate rector for the past year, has made changes like putting up signs that say anyone can use any bathroom, including pronouns on name tags and preaching to "siblings in Christ" rather than brothers and sisters.

What has been the result of this cultural innovation? Have more trans people flooded this church in southeast Portland?

We are not told, as the article switches to a Minneapolis man who co-founded QueerTheology.com who says the Bible has several passages transcending gender norms.

"We have women who are judges. We have men who spend their time in the kitchen. There are eunuchs, which were considered this kind of other third gender," he says.

His assertions go unquestioned, even though there’s quite a good argument that eunuchs weren’t by any means considered a third gender.


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'Till we cast our crowns before Thee' -- ties that bind in last rites for Queen Elizabeth II

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'Till we cast our crowns before Thee' -- ties that bind in last rites for Queen Elizabeth II

During the private funeral of her husband, Queen Elizabeth II sat alone near the St. George's Chapel altar, socially distanced from her family and wearing a black pandemic mask.

This searing portrait of grief moved viewers worldwide. And as Prince Philip's casket was lowered into the Windsor Castle vault, singers chanted the Kontakion of the Departed, a tie to his Orthodox roots in Greece.

“Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints," they sang, "where sorrow and pain are no more; neither sighing but life everlasting. … All we go down to the dust; and weeping o'er the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

Only 18 months later, Queen Elizabeth requested the same chant, in the same chapel. This time it marked the start of the committal liturgy which closed a 10-day wave of statecraft, vigils, memorials and processions preceding the majestic state funeral.

The queen's final, intimate Windsor Castle service began where her husband's had ended, as if one rite was flowing into another.

"Queen Elizabeth was one of those people in this mortal life who always thought ahead," said David Lyle Jeffrey, distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for Studies in Religion at Baylor University. When preparing these rites, the queen was "clearly looking for prayers, scriptures and hymns that made connections she wanted to make for her family, her people and the world. … I think she succeeded brilliantly."

An Anglican from Canada, Jeffrey said the events closing the queen's historic 70-year reign were an appropriate time to explore the "essence of her admirable Christian character." Thus, the retired literature professor wrote a poem after her death -- "Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen)" -- saluting her steady, consistent faith. It ended with:


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Podcast: Are Brigham Young sports controversies about sports, religion or politics?

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Podcast: Are Brigham Young sports controversies about sports, religion or politics?

I have a journalism question, one that will require some time travel. Let’s flash back to the 2021 football game between the Brigham Young Cougars and the Baylor Bears, which was played in Waco, Texas, an interesting city known to many as “Jerusalem on the Brazos.”

After the first BYU score, a significant number of Baylor students are heard chanting “F*** the Mormons!” over and over. Or maybe, since we are talking about folks from a Baptist university, the chant is “Convert the Mormons!” The chant doesn’t focus on the “Cougars,” but on BYU’s obvious heritage with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The chants were strong enough to be heard on broadcast media and, within minutes, there are clear audio recordings posted on social media.

My question, a which I asked during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in): Would this nasty, crude event be considered a valid news story? In national coverage, would the religious ties of the two schools — soon to be rivals in the Big 12 — be discussed? In other words, would this be a religion-news story, as well as a sports story?

I think it’s pretty obvious that the answers would be “yes” and, again, “yes.”

This brings us, of course, to two BYU sports stories from recent weeks — one that received massive national coverage and the other that, well, didn’t get nearly as much ink. I think it’s valid to ask "Why?’ in both cases.

Before I share some links to coverage of the two stories, let’s pause and consider this related Religion News Service report: “Nearly 200 religious colleges deemed ‘unsafe’ for LGBTQ students by Campus Pride.” Here is the overture:

Dozens of religious universities across the country, including Seattle Pacific University in Washington and Brigham Young University in Utah, were listed as unsafe and discriminatory campuses for LGBTQ students by Campus Pride, a national organization advocating for inclusive colleges and universities.

Fewer than 10 of the 193 schools on the list released Thursday (Sept. 8), were not religiously affiliated or did not list a religious affiliation, according to Campus Pride.

The lengthy Campus Pride report on BYU opens with this statement (the shorter Baylor item appears here):

Brigham Young University has qualified for the Worst List because it has an established and well-documented history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination that endangers victims of sexual assault and has resulted in a call for it to not be included as a Big 12 school.

The key word, of course, is “endangers.”


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Plug-In: A 50-year TV flashback -- Why 'The Waltons' wasn't afraid of religious faith

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Plug-In: A 50-year TV flashback -- Why 'The Waltons' wasn't afraid of religious faith

During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered “The Waltons” and watched all 221 episodes.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that the classic TV show about a Depression-era family in rural Virginia made its prime-time debut on Sept. 14, 1972.

That’s 50 years ago.

I started emailing myself notes about religion references in specific episodes — those with titles such as “The Sinner”, “The Sermon” and “The Baptism” — and marked the anniversary date on my calendar. Journalists are always looking for a story, don't you know?

I pitched a piece to The Associated Press. To my delight, Global Religion news director David Crary and news editor Holly Meyer let me write it. This isn’t hard news, but I hope it’s interesting.

Speaking of AP friends, Matt Curry and I worked together in the Dallas bureau from 2003 to 2005. Curry later left journalism and attended Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. He's a big fan of “The Waltons,” and his family’s experience became the lede for my feature:

The Rev. Matt Curry’s parents were children of the Great Depression, just like “The Waltons” — the beloved TV family whose prime-time series premiered 50 years ago.

When Curry was growing up on a farm in northern Texas, his carpenter father and teacher mother often argued playfully over who had a poorer childhood.

“The Depression was the seminal time of their lives — the time that was about family and survival and making it through,” said Curry, now a 59-year-old Presbyterian pastor in Owensboro, Kentucky. “My dad used to talk about how his dad would go work out of town and send $5 a week to feed and clothe the family.”

So when “The Waltons,” set in 1932 and running through World War II, debuted on CBS on Sept. 14, 1972, the Currys identified closely with the storylines.

I enjoyed interviewing two stars of “The Waltons”: Richard Thomas (John-Boy Walton) and Kami Cotler (Elizabeth Walton).

The story explores how the series delved into spiritual themes at a time when the TV networks tended to avoid them.


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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

This week something unexpected happened after I filed my national “On Religion” column, something that I have never seen before in my decades of religion-news work.

What? A retired literature professor responded to my column with a poem.

The topic was easy to predict. Like millions of other people around the world, but especially in Great Britain and the Commonwealth, I have spent many hours watching (primarily on British television) the rites and public drama surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

I will post the column at GetReligion at the usual time this weekend, after it has run in most newspapers linked to the Universal syndicate. But the podcast team decided to go ahead and use it as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” (CLICK HERE to tune that in), since so many people are talking about the death of the queen. Here is a short clip from that column:

Throughout her life, Queen Elizabeth II understood the symbolic importance of kneeling, according to former Durham Bishop N.T. Wright. After one Church of England synod, she privately expressed surprise — disappointment, even — that worshippers in Westminster Abbey simply lined up to receive Holy Communion, instead of kneeling.

“Kneeling was important to her,” said the popular author, in a “Premier Christianity” tribute. In his encounters with her, Wright found the queen “very friendly and clearly a very devout, what we would consider ‘old fashioned’ Church of England Christian. I remember thinking during more than one Christmas broadcast, she has just preached the Gospel to the nation in a way that perhaps nobody else could have done.”

In response to the column, a reader raised in Canada — but best known for his work at Baylor University in Texas and at Peking University — wrote a poem and sent it to me.

David Lyle Jeffrey, now a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies in Religion, noted that he has never considered himself a “royalist,” but the queen’s death is certainly a time to explore the “essence of her admirable Christian character and gracious reign.” The former Baylor provost and literature professor entitled the poem “Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen).” Here is how it ends:


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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

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More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

Confession: I am still paying next to zero attention to American telly when it comes to rites linked to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I’m tuned into BBC World and, via YouTube, streaming Sky News.

The few times I’ve flipped over to the major U.S. networks left me with the same impression as before — that the Royal Family is viewed as kind of a cleaned-up version of the Kardashians, with the queen as a sad, nobel celebrity matriarch. See this earlier post: “Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?”

I think the big gaps (other than details about her faith) have been any sense of (a) the gravitas added by her World War II service, including her work driving an Army ambulance. Also, it’s poignant that, (b) until the stunning abdication of King Edward VIII, she was raised with zero expectation of becoming queen. This relatively normal childhood (until age 10) created tight ties to her parents and shaped her views on family.

Yes, the BBC has had a very heavy emphasis on the admiration for the queen seen in mainline, establishment churches and minority faiths. At some point I would like to know if the admiration for Elizabeth II common among American evangelicals also exists in the UK. Click here for a roundup of that, including these typical remarks from Bishop Andrew Forster of the Church of Ireland:

"Throughout her life she set Christ, and his message and his teaching, as the primary thing that has helped her and blessed her and I think made her into the incredible monarch, sovereign that she was."

Bishop Forster described the late Queen as the "grandmother of the nation".

"Maybe it was because people understood that she had an understanding of some of the issues that we might face behind closed doors, some of the issues of increased frailty, of family strife — there was that sense of a grandmotherly figure who understood the challenges of life," he said.

In my previous post, I noted that a Washington Post feature about the queen’s “most memorable remarks” that said her public appearances were “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections.” There was content about her Christmas messages, while omitting any faith content.

However, the religion desk — veteran Sarah Pulliam Bailey (a former GetReligion contributor) — went in depth on one of the most interesting religion-news angles from the queen’s long life: “Fact checking ‘The Crown’: Queen Elizabeth’s faith and her close relationship with preacher Billy Graham.”


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Podcast: New York Times talks to a Catholic 'star' and (#triggerwarning) things went OK

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Podcast: New York Times talks to a Catholic 'star' and (#triggerwarning) things went OK

It isn’t everyday that I get emails from Catholic readers, of one tribe or another, praising a New York Times article, especially one in which a Catholic leader is asked tough questions about some controversial points of doctrine.

That’s strange, in a sad kind of way. This phenomena was almost worth a “Crossroads” podcast in and of itself (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

But there are other worthwhile reasons to discuss the New York Times Magazine feature that ran with what was clearly meant to be a grabber headline: “A Catholic Podcasting Star Says Theocracy Is Not the Way.”

Yes, yes, we all know that there are armies of Catholics out there who believe that this diverse and rapidly secularizing nation can be turned into some kind of Catholic or ecumenical Christian theocracy. Try to imagine either of those political options in a culture dominated by Big Tech, Big Academia and Hollywood.

Before we get to the “theocracy” discussion, let’s note the identity and the credentials of the priest featured in this interview. In the end, we want to know: Why was this priest able to emerge relatively unscathed by this dance with the Gray Lady, to the degree that many Catholics were pleased with this encounter? Here is some of the introduction:

Since it was introduced by the Catholic priest Mike Schmitz, who goes by Father Mike, in January 2021, the little-heralded “The Bible in a Year (With Fr. Mike Schmitz)” has been the most popular Apple religion podcast for a majority of 2021 and 2022 and has even, on two occasions, reached the No. 1 spot among all podcasts on Apple’s platform. The show has been downloaded 350 million times and an average of 750,000 times a day.

That’s credibility, in our tech-defined world — even to Times-people. Let’s continue:

Each 20-to-25-minute installment … features two or three short scriptural readings and a pithy reflection by Father Mike, an affable 47-year-old Midwesterner whose upbeat and self-deprecating manner — not to mention regular-guy good looks — exude strong Ted Lasso vibes. The staggering success of the podcast has helped turn its host, whose day job is as a chaplain at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the director of the youth ministry for the Duluth diocese, into a kind of celebrity. He travels the country giving speeches, and some of his YouTube videos have racked up millions of views.

Now, on to the content that provided that click-bait headline for faithful New York Times readers.


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Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?

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Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?

The Queen is dead. God save the King.

It’s hard to edit the religion content out of that equation. However, when journalists are asked to deal with the death of the queen who was, it can be argued, the most famous woman of the past 100 years, there are plenty of important, “real,” issues to deal with other than the state of her soul and her Christian faith.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening watching the BBC Global coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, as opposed to, shall we say, American “telly.” The BBC focused on the death of one of the greatest, if not “the” greatest, monarchs in Great Britain’s history. There were many references to her Christian faith. American television, for the most part, offered discussions of the death of a great celebrity. If I have been too harsh with that judgment, please send me some quality URLs.

How to approach this totally justified tidal wave of coverage? I think the easiest way to search out the religion-beat content is with two specific online searches.

First, search Google News for “Queen Elizabeth” and “Christmas.” Elizabeth the Great was known, of course, for her dignified and timely Christmas addresses — an essential part of the season for Brits and those who love all things British. The vast majority of the mainstream-media obits for the queen contain references to her Christmas talks — sort of.

What did she say in these very personal messages? That’s the key.

This leads to my second Google News search, for “Queen Elizabeth” and “Christian.” This is where the mainstream press — unless I have missed something, somewhere — offer, well, something like this. In the religious press, readers will find many, many pages of content, such as this feature from Premier Christianity, a niche UK religion website: “Queen Elizabeth II served Christ.”

There was, however, this Washington Post feature with a hopeful title: “Queen Elizabeth II, in her own words: Her most memorable remarks.” After all, it did include a section with this title: “Annual Christmas speeches.” These talks were, readers are told, “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections from the nonagenarian.” However, this is what the Post offered:

“In the old days the monarch led his soldiers on the battlefield and his leadership at all times was close and personal. Today things are very different,” she said in her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957. “I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”


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