Friday, April 25, 2025

Kelsey Dallas

, , , , , ,

Friday Five: Pastor suicide, religion of Congress, Catholic sex wars, frugal philanthropist, cow holiday

, , , , , ,

I missed this incredible story in the midst of celebrating Christmas.

A few days before the holiday, the Los Angeles Times published Hailey Branson-Potts’ compelling and important piece on a young pastor who preached about depression then killed himself a few days later.

Speaking of the Los Angeles Times, that paper has been boosting its staff since its $500 million purchase last summer by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who has voiced a desire to compete with the Washington Post and the New York Times.

As far as I know, the Los Angeles Times hasn’t hired a full-time religion writer as part of its revival, but that would be a tremendous step, right? Who wants to organize the petition?

In the meantime, let’s dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Congress is getting more diverse, but it’s still dominated by Christians, according to a Pew Research Center study cited by CNN’s Daniel Burke, Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins, the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas, NPR’s Tom Gjelten and others.

In related news, the Washington Post — in a story produced by Godbeat pros Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer, along with Marisa Iati — reported on the swearing in of the nation’s first two Muslim congresswomen.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Monday Mix: McCarrick deep dive, Willow Creek future, Catholic losses, religious freedom worry

, , , , , , , ,

Welcome to another edition of the Monday Mix, where we focus on headlines and insights you might have missed from the weekend and late in the week.

The fine print: Just because we include a headline here doesn't mean we won't offer additional analysis in a different post, particularly if it's a major story. In fact, if you read a piece linked here and have questions or concerns that we might address, please don't hesitate to comment below or tweet us at @GetReligion. The goal here is to point at important news and say, "Hey, look at this."

Three weekend reads

1. "Decisions could be made by one [Vatican official] who says: ‘Screw this, I’ll reroute it through the basement.’" Washington Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein takes a deep dive into “How the Vatican handled reports of Theodore McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct and what it says about the Catholic Church.”

Boorstein’s compelling overture:

In November 2000, a Manhattan priest got fed up with the secrets he knew about a star archbishop named Theodore McCarrick and decided to tell the Vatican.

For years, the Rev. Boniface Ramsey had heard from seminarians that McCarrick was pressuring them to sleep in his bed. The students told him they weren’t being touched, but still, he felt, it was totally inappropriate and irresponsible behavior — especially for the newly named archbishop of Washington.

Ramsey called the Vatican’s then-U.S. ambassador, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, who implored the priest to write the allegation so it could be sent up the chain in Rome. “Send the letter!” Montalvo demanded, Ramsey recalls.

He never heard back from Montalvo, and Ramsey has since destroyed his copy of the 2000 letter, he said.

“I thought of it as secret and somehow even sacred — something not to be divulged,” Ramsey told The Washington Post. It wasn’t the concept of a cleric occasionally “slipping up” with their celibacy vow that shocked Ramsey, who believes that’s common. It was the repeated and nonconsensual nature of the McCarrick allegations.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Double standard? Religious animus? Five links to help dissect SCOTUS ruling on Trump's travel ban

, , , , , , ,

How does the much-discussed Masterpiece Cakeshop case relate to this week's long-awaited U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Trump's ban on travel from five Muslim-majority countries?

Astute journalists — including Godbeat pros — immediately tackled that key question after the court's 5-4 decision Tuesday.

Two key words in the best coverage: religious liberty.

More on that in a moment. But first, a little background: Speaking at the Religious Freedom Annual Review at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, last week, law professor Thomas Berg drew a connection between the two recent cases.

These days, many support some people's religious freedom — be it that of conservative Christians or Muslim immigrants — but the same folks tend not to have sympathy for the other side, said Berg, who teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

He added on Twitter:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Are there really 139 religious freedom bills out there? Deseret News offers an ambitious round-up

, , , ,

With religious freedom in the news these days (from cake bakers in Colorado to imprisoned Christians in North Korea), it’s only right to call attention to a mammoth project the Deseret News just kicked off.

Calling it “the first in an ongoing series of in-depth stories and analyses dissecting and understanding religious liberty in America and the place of faith in the public square,” the newspaper – owned by a subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – offered readers the journalistic equivalent of an Excel sheet of religious liberty lawsuits and legislative efforts in response.

It lists 139 bills in six categories: Adoption, college campuses, service refusals, LGBT rights, health care and miscellaneous. The piece begins:

The turf war over the place of faith in the public square is accelerating, and the stakes are rising like never before. Today, nearly every strata of society is affected, from kids in foster care outside Detroit, to college freshmen in Arizona, to florists and cake shop owners in America's heartland.

On one side are believers who say their faith communities are threatened by an encroaching secular and godless movement seeking to silence and shun them. On the other side are LGBT and women's rights activists who say Americans are being denied basic human rights and enduring ongoing discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.

Many others, including long-time religious liberty advocates, both gay and straight, are alarmed by the direction of today's religious freedom debates, arguing that this value is meant to unify, not tear people apart.

What’s interesting is that reporter Kelsey Dallas found 139 bills debated in one year.

The latest battlefield affects kids in need of new homes. State lawmakers are deciding whether faith-based adoption or foster care agencies should be allowed to receive government funding if, for religious reasons, they won't serve same-sex couples.

As for campus free speech, the issue isn’t religious per se, but some bills include prohibitions against treating religious organizations different than other groups or penalizing their wish to appoint leaders who hold certain religious beliefs.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Amid a barrage of slanted reporting, a smart, helpful take on religious freedom legislation

, , , , , ,

Missouri. Georgia. North Carolina. Mississippi. Tennessee. Louisiana.

Those are just a half-dozen of the states where recent legislation pitting gay rights vs. religious freedom has produced high-profile debates.

As any casual reader of GetReligion knows, much of the major media coverage has been incomplete and slanted (read: left leaning), with a few notable exceptions.

Most of our critiques focus on easy-to-spot crimes: The failure to give both sides a voice. The bias that using scare quotes shows. The editorialization that occurs via framing.

Journalism 101 stuff, in other words.

So many news organizations struggle to cover this subject matter at even a basic level (much less provide context that includes, say, the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act). Given that low bar, we are even more surprised when we come across a story that truly advances the topic in an insightful way.

Enter religion writer Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News National:


Please respect our Commenting Policy