GetReligion
Thursday, April 17, 2025

Amy Coney Barrett

A 40-year history of People of Praise that many journalists might like to know

Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination has brought renewed attention to a part of the American charismatic movement that has been a source of controversy for 40 years. Sadly, very few journalists understand “intentional Christian communities,” or “covenant communities,” which were major fixtures on the American religious scene from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.

Barrett grew up in a family affiliated with one such community – called People of Praise – in South Bend. Before her name came to the fore a few years ago as possible Supreme Court material, the only people who knew about these groups were religion reporters who were plying their trade more than 30 years ago.

Even then, People of Praise wasn’t making headlines. You had to be a specialist in Pentecostal-charismatic movements (as I am) to know what they were.

Today, reporters struggle to explain a type of Christianity that was cutting edge during Jesus Movement days but feels very foreign now. And so you get a mishmash of reportage and opinion ranging from the Wall Street Journal’s guest editorial on the benefits of People of Praise to Newsweek’s truly awful story that had to be corrected. There are too many other examples to even survey them.

So, we’re going to get a brief history.

Before I do that, I want to spotlight two outlets that have done a good job of reporting on Barrett, starting with a Vox piece by Constance Grady that correctly explained why the nominee has erroneously been connected to the “handmaids” in People of Hope, a Catholic charismatic group in New Jersey. Grady writes:

One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group she belongs to, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The group isn’t an established inspiration for the book — but the story has developed legs anyway.

Do read the whole of it, because it explains how several publications made stupid mistakes when covering the People of Praise/People of Hope mixup.

The other is a Politico story that takes one on a tour of People of Praise education and ministry sites in South Bend.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

There they go, there they go again: New York Times views #ACB through eyes of conservative women

I recently raised a few eyebrows with a post that — #TriggerWarning — praised The New York Times for a piece about Judge Amy Coney Barrett and why her nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court was so symbolic for cultural and religious conservatives. The headline on that post: “Speaking of people being praised: New York Times offered solid, old-school story about Barrett.

Why was that Times report so important?

Well, no surprise here, but it was crucial that the team that produced the story include a religion-beat professional — as opposed to coming from the Donald Trump-era political desk. I also noted:

… Here is the key point I want to make: Unlike many Times stories in recent years, almost all of this material comes from qualified sources (left and right) whose names are attached to their opinions and the information they provided. There are attribution clauses all over the place, just like in Times of old.

Lo and behold, the Times followed up on that story with another religion-team feature that dug deeper on a perfectly valid point that was hinted at in the previous feature. Here’s the double-decker headline on that second story, which drew quite a bit of praise from conservatives on social media:

For Conservative Christian Women, Amy Coney Barrett’s Success Is Personal

Judge Barrett is a new kind of icon for some, one they have not seen before in American cultural and political life.

This is another fine story. However, I have one criticism of it that some may find a bit ironic, or even hard to take seriously.

The story does a fine job of demonstrating that the pro-ACB women are not a simplistic choir of cloned conservatives each with precisely the same point of view in terms of politics and culture. For example, it’s clear that some of these women are not all that fond of Trump the man or even the president. What unites them are commitments to specific values and concerns about specific moral, cultural and political issues.

This is where Judge Barrett comes into the picture. They applaud her because of her personal life, faith and choices, as well as her intellectual prowess and sparkling legal career.

So what is missing? The story briefly mentions the fierce opposition to Barrett, but never digs into the views of progressives — thus allowing Barrett supporters to debate them.

Yes, this is a Times story that needed MORE on-the-record material from the cultural left.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Plug-in: Do religious conservatives really care what Trump says about them in private?

Every 24-hour news cycle seems to bring a new alleged scandal involving President Donald Trump.

If you believe the headlines, Trump has referred to Americans who died in war as “losers” and “suckers.” He has avoided paying federal taxes. And he has — according to McKay Coppins of The Atlanticsecretly mocked his Christian supporters. (Click here for tmatt’s “Crossroads” podcast and post on this topic.)

My question is: Does it matter from a political standpoint?

“The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain,” Coppins wrote this week. “In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion.”

But while Trump critics hyperventilate over such stories, voters knew about his propensity to be a jerk before they elected him.

Even in his public statements, the Republican incumbent typically sounds more like a blabbering professional wrestler than a prominent world leader. (Did you catch the debate the other night?)

With all that in mind, I thought Michelle Boorstein, the award-winning religion writer for the Washington Post, had a spot-on response to Coppins’ report.

“What's the evidence that conservative Christians support Trump because of his attitude towards THEM,” Boorstein asked on Twitter, “vs. his willingness to advance his policy priorities?”

“Exactly,” replied John Daniel Davidson, political editor for The Federalist. “Most conservative Christians couldn't care less what Trump thinks about them.”

Which is why, it seems to me, his policies and his nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court (more on that in a moment) matter more to his base than anything he might say.

• • •

One obvious update: Generally, I put the finishing touches on this column on Thursday night.

That was the case this week, so I wrote and scheduled “Weekend Plug-in” before President Donald Trump revealed early Friday morning that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. As The Associated Press put it, the “stunning announcement … plunges the country deeper into uncertainty just a month before the presidential election.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Plug-in: Press handles religion differently in news coverage of Ginsburg and Barrett

The big news this past week was, of course, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the furor over President Donald Trump’s intention to nominate a replacement before the election.

There were faith angles galore and — for added intrigue — questions over whether journalists applied different standards to the religion of Ginsburg, the liberal icon, and that of 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the justice’s possible conservative successor.

For example, Religion News Service extolled Ginsburg as “passionate about Judaism’s concern for justice,” while characterizing Barrett as a “controversial Catholic” — a designation questioned by Religion Unplugged’s own Clemente Lisi. (P.S. Don’t miss Lisi’s fact check on Barrett’s faith.)

“Yes RBG’s religion shaped her approach,” RNS’ Bob Smietana said on Twitter. “And yes if (Barrett) is nominee it will be controversial. We can report both things.”

A Reuters story about “a self-described charismatic Christian community” to which Barrett purportedly belongs also drew scrutiny. At the conservative National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out a series of edits to the wire service’s original report.

“We all know what this means, in terms of press coverage,” GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly argued in a post in which he singled out praise for a story by New York Times religion writer Elizabeth Dias and her colleague Adam Liptak. “Many of the same reporters who are perfectly comfortable calling Joe Biden a ‘devout’ Catholic — while his actions clash with church doctrines on marriage and sex — are going to spill oceans of digital ink warning readers about the dangerous dogmas that dwell loudly in the heart and mind of Barrett.”

However, the focus on religion in the battle over the Supreme Court concerns Ira Rifkin Of GetReligion.org, a former RNS national correspondent who has covered domestic and foreign religious issues since the 1980s.

“It should not be about Amy Coney Barrett’s traditional Catholicism any more than Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s key attribute was that she was an ultra-liberal Jew. Or Martin Luther King Jr.’s liberal liberation Protestantism,” Rifkin said on Facebook.

“It should not be about ‘bad’ religion vs ‘good’ religion,” he added.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Baptist thinking on anti-Catholicism: Scribes covering SCOTUS war need to know some history

Anyone who knows their church-state history is aware that Baptists played a key role in the creation of America’s tolerant marketplace of ideas and “free exercise” on matters of faith.

Ask Thomas Jefferson. Here is a much-quoted, with good cause, passage from his pen, taken from the famous 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

At various times in history, activists on the left and the right have found that letter disturbing.

So, as journalists prepare for whatever awaits Judge Amy Coney Barrett and her family (click here for this week’s podcast post on the “handmaid” wars), journalists may want to take a look at this short article from Baptist historian Thomas Kidd, published at The Gospel Coalition website. The headline: “Amy Coney Barrett and Anti-Catholicism in America.”

It’s sad to have to say this, but it helps to know that Kidd has taken his fair share of shots from social-media warriors on both sides during the Donald Trump era. Through it all, he has consistently defended — as a Baptist’s Baptist — an old-school liberal approach to the First Amendment and religious liberty (without “scare” quotes).

Here is Kidd’s overture:

The looming nomination of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court justice has renewed an ugly but persistent tradition in American politics: anti-Catholicism. Since 1517 there have been enduring and fundamental theological divides between Protestants and Catholics about tradition and Scripture, grace and works, the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, and more. Disagreement over theology certainly is not the same thing as outright anti-Catholicism, though theological differences are often components of anti-Catholicism.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

New podcast: Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?

The question for the week appears to be: Are you now, or have you ever been, a charismatic Catholic?

In a land in which citizens are divided just as much by entertainment as they are by their religious and political choices, that question leads directly to cable television and a certain blue-zip-code hit focusing on, to quote IMDB, this story hook: “Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.”

This leads us to the word “handmaid” and strained efforts by some — repeat “some” — journalists to attach it to the life and faith of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. This topic was, of course, discussed at length during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). How could we avoid it?

It’s crucial to know that the word “handmaid” has radically different meanings for members of two radically different flocks of Americans.

For Catholics and other traditional Christians, this term is defined by its use in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, during this encounter between Mary and the Angel Gabriel. This is long, but essential:

… The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. …For with God nothing shall be impossible.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

In this context, the word refers to a “female servant.” However, its use in Christian tradition has, for 2,000 years, been linked directly to St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Now, let’s move to mass media, where the Urban Dictionary defines the term as:


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Conservative Catholics could be energized if Trump picks Amy Coney Barrett for SCOTUS

It was back in January — eons ago in the context of 2020 news — that Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to appear at the annual March for Life. At last month’s Republican National Convention, a conservative nun named Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne called Trump “the most pro-life president that this nation has ever had.”

This brings us to now and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The expectation is that Trump will put forth a nominee — a shortlist that sees Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the frontrunner — that has a record of being opposed to America’s post-Roe v. Wade abortion laws. That will inflame activists on the cultural left and exacerbate tensions in this country following the pandemic and protests surrounding racial injustice.

The focus on abortion will, once again, challenge journalists to produce balanced, accurate, on-the-record material describing the religious beliefs of the potential nominees.

How will this affect the final weeks of the 2020 campaign? Attacks from some Democrats on Barrett during the confirmation process, should she be the nominee, could very well help Trump with some Catholic voters. In turn, attacks on Barrett would hurt Biden, a Catholic trying to get Catholic swing voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio to vote for him. If anything, anti-Catholic attacks against Barrett could both galvanize GOP voters and tip some undecided Catholic voters across the Rust Belt toward Trump.

The 48-year-old Barrett, a native of New Orleans, and her husband Jesse Barrett, a former prosecutor, have seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome. Barrett learned of her son’s diagnosis during a prenatal test, but decided to have the baby. Aside from being a federal judge, Barrett teaches law at Notre Dame. She is a former law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, with The New York Times reporting that her fellow clerks saying she was his favorite. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School and joined the faculty in 2002.

If nominated and confirmed, Barrett would be the youngest member of the Supreme Court in history and, thus, could help shape many future decisions.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Speaking of people being praised: New York Times offered solid, old-school story about Barrett

Guess what? Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being considered, once again, for an open chair at the Supreme Court, the only branch of the United States government that seems to matter in this tense and divided land.

The odds are good that you have read about this development in the national press or even in the few remaining pages of your local newspaper.

We all know what this means, in terms of press coverage. Many of the same reporters who are perfectly comfortable calling Joe Biden a “devout” Catholic — while his actions clash with church doctrines on marriage and sex — are going to spill oceans of digital ink warning readers about the dangerous dogmas that dwell loudly in the heart and mind of Barrett. I am following all of that in social media and elsewhere.

However, let me start these discussions with a post that might surprise many readers. I would like to praise the recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “To Conservatives, Barrett Has ‘Perfect Combination’ of Attributes for Supreme Court.” Also, I think it was wise to have a religion-beat professional take part in reporting and writing this story.

I am sure that combatants on both sides of this debate will find some sections in this story rather troubling. But here is the key point I want to make: Unlike many Times stories in recent years, almost all of this material comes from qualified sources (left and right) whose names are attached to their opinions and the information they provided. There are attribution clauses all over the place, just like in Times of old.

Near the top there is this short summary:

“She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, who has praised Mr. Trump’s entire shortlist.

The nomination of a judge whom Mr. Trump was quoted last year as “saving” to be Justice Ginsburg’s replacement would almost surely plunge the nation into a bitter and divisive debate over the future of abortion rights, made even more pointed because Judge Barrett would replace a justice who was an unequivocal supporter of those rights. That is a debate Mr. Trump has not shied away from as president, as his judicial appointments and efforts to court conservatives have repeatedly shown.

As you would expect, Barrett’s critics are given plenty of space to respond — which is totally appropriate. It is also good that these voices are clearly identified, along with information about their organizations.

In other words, the story contains evidence of debate on a serious topic in the news.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Let's play 'Spot the religious test' in some big news stories -- on left and the right

I realize (trigger warning!) that the U.S. Constitution is a rather controversial subject right now, with all the talk about U.S. Senate “majority votes” and tiny little red flyover states getting to have two senators, just like blue powerhouse states on the coasts.

Still, it’s a good thing for journalists in mainstream newsrooms to know a thing or two about this document, especially when covering the religion beat. I’m not just talking about the free press and freedom of religion stuff, either.

Yet another wild story in the White House has raised an issue that, #ALAS, I think we will be seeing more of in the near future. The key issue: Candidates for public service facing “religious tests” served up by their critics.

First things first: Ladies and gentlemen, here is Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

This leads us to several relatively recent news stories that raised questions about “religious tests.”

The key question: Can journalists recognize “religious tests” when they take place on the political left and the right?


Please respect our Commenting Policy