GetReligion
Friday, April 11, 2025

Sarah Pulliam Bailey

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Plug-in: No anti-Catholic sequel, as Democrats avoided loud dogma at Barrett hearings

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This time, the Democrats avoided the dogma. So far.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s faith was a big focus going into this week’s Senate Judicial Committee hearings.

In advance of the confirmation proceedings, The Associated Press’ Mary Clare Jalonick and Elana Schor noted:

WASHINGTON (AP) — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca and Lindsay Wise pointed out:

In her 2017 confirmation hearings, senators from both parties brought up the connection between Judge Barrett’s faith and her rulings. But Democrats, especially California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, got backlash for their questions.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley asked, “When is it proper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law?”

Sen. Feinstein said, “Whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma…I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

In response to the line of questioning, Judge Barrett said, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

With the 2017 backlash in mind, Democrats steered clear of Barrett’s religion at this week’s hearings, even as Republicans focused on it.


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Plug-in: What's in a name? More evidence that Americans live in a post-denominational age

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When it comes to religious groups, what’s in a name?

In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began a push to get rid of the term “Mormon.” (A quick side note: Continued news media use of that identifier is “significantly correlated” with negative sentiment in the article, argues a new study, coauthored by Brigham Young University journalism professor Joel Campbell and Public Square Magazine’s Christopher D. Cunningham.)

Now, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — seems to be recasting itself, as first reported by Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Bailey’s story this week noted:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the “Southern” part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the “Southern Baptist” name as too regional for a global group of believers.

“Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee,” said Greear, who this summer used the phrase “Black lives matter” in a presidential address and announced that he would retire a historic gavel named for an enslaver. “Every week we gather to worship a savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”

For more insight on the possible change, see Religion News Service national correspondent Adelle M. Banks’ follow-up report.

Speaking of names, Greear serves as pastor of The Summit Church, a Durham, North Carolina, megachurch whose website contains scarce references to its Baptist affiliation.

Other examples of prominent Southern Baptist churches that don’t necessarily market themselves that way include Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California and Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge charts: Whaddaya know? Some evangelicals are rethinking Trump

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If you follow American evangelicalism closely, you know that there are quite a few divisions and fault lines inside the movement. I’m talking about evangelicalism as a whole, but this is also true among the infamous “white evangelicals.”

It’s true that, heading into the 2016 election, white evangelicals played a major role in Donald Trump’s success in the primaries. However, many evangelicals supported other candidates — including the most active evangelicals in Iowa. I continue to recommend the book “Alienated America” by Timothy P. Carney, for those who want to dig deeper on that subject.

In the end, about half of the white evangelicals who supported Trump in the general election really wanted to vote for someone else. They were voting against Hillary Clinton.

Now, there is evidence — thank you GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge, as always — that some white evangelicals have started to rethink their reluctant votes for Trump.

To be honest, I have been telling reporters, since 2016, to watch for this mini-trend. But, in the end, the force that will pull many of these voters back to Trump has nothing to do with Trump himself. The support is rooted in opposition to Democratic Party actions on crucial issues linked to abortion and also the First Amendment ( that’s “religious liberty” in most news reports),

While pointing readers to these recent Burge tweets, let me frame them with some material from an On Religion column I wrote two years ago about the whole 81% of white evangelicals love Trump myth. The bottom line? It’s the issues, not the candidate.

Most "evangelicals by belief" (59 percent) have decided they will have to use their votes to support stands on specific political and moral issues, according to a … study by Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center Institute, working with LifeWay.

This time around, 50 percent of evangelical voters said they cast their votes to support a candidate, while 30 percent said they voted against a specific candidate. One in five evangelicals said they did not vote in 2016.


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Plug-In: What does this landmark LGBTQ ruling mean for traditional religious institutions?

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling Monday barring workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender workers certainly seemed to catch some by surprise.

Take USA Today, for example.

The URL on the national newspaper’s story indicates that the court denied protection to LGBT workers. Oops!

Kelsey Dallas, national religion reporter for the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News, closely follows high court cases with faith-based ramifications.

“Genuinely shocked,” she tweeted concerning the 6-3 decision. “I had prewritten only one version of this story and predicted a ruling against gay and transgender workers based on debate during oral arguments.”

Why was Dallas so surprised?

I asked her that in a Zoom discussion that also included Elana Schor, national religion and politics reporter for The Associated Press; Daniel Silliman, news editor for Christianity Today; and Bob Smietana, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service.

Watch the video to hear Dallas’ reasoning. (Hint: It’s not just that Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion.)

Learn, too, what all the panelists think the decision means for religious hiring practices, the court’s 5-4 conservative split and the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Among related must-read coverage: Schor’s AP story on why the religious right laments the ruling but sees opportunities, Yonat Shimron’s RNS story on conservatives looking to the next cases on religious liberty and Elizabeth Dias’ New York Times story on the “seismic implications.”

Why did the decision rattle Christian conservatives? The Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey explains.

At the Deseret News, Dallas asks, “Are we headed toward a federal version of the Utah Compromise on LGBTQ rights?”


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Home, home on the rage: And seldom was heard an unpredictable word in Trump Bible wars

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Let me just shout a quick “Amen!” in response to the sentiments offered on Twitter by my colleague Bobby Ross Jr.

Here’s the quote: “Too. Much. News.”

For the past three decades or so, Tuesday has been the work day when I try to hide away and write my “On Religion” column, which I ship to the Universal syndicate on Wednesday morning (this week: black preachers, Old Testament prophets and centuries of pain).

Nevertheless, during the past day or so I have been following the Trumpian Bible battles on Twitter. I saw, of course, quite a few people — including conservative Christians — addressing President Donald Trump’s Bible-aloft photo op. I wondered, frankly, whether we would hear from many of those people in the mainstream press coverage that would follow. Uh. That would be “no.”

So raise your hands if you were surprised that the Episcopal Church leadership in Washington, D.C., was outraged? Their comments were essential, of course, because the story unfolded in front of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House (site of a fire a day earlier). So you knew religious progressives would get lots of hot ink, as in the Washington Post piece that opened with the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, Episcopal bishop of Washington:

“I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop,” Budde said.

She excoriated the president for standing in front of the church — its windows boarded up with plywood — holding up a Bible, which Budde said “declares that God is love.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde of the president. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”

Let’s keep reading. Raise your hand if you are surprised that predictable evangelicals said predictable things — which is also a valid part of the story:

Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for several of Trump’s evangelical religious advisers, tweeted favorably about the incident as well.

“I will never forget seeing @POTUS @realDonaldTrump slowly & in-total-command walk from the @WhiteHouse across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,” he wrote. “After just saying, ‘I will keep you safe.’ ”


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Plug-In: Investigation into Amish, Mennonite sexual abuse honored as Pulitzer finalist

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It’s a heavenly time for the Godbeat.

For the second year in a row, journalism’s most prestigious awards have recognized the transcendent work of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion editor Peter Smith.

Smith and two colleagues — Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury — were honored this week as Pulitzer Prize finalists for “an unprecedented investigation of child sexual abuse and cover-ups in the insular Amish and Mennonite communities.”

Just last year, Smith was a key part of the Post-Gazette team that received a Pulitzer for its “immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.”

I asked Smith, who is president of the Religion News Association, for his takeaway on what the latest Pulitzer nod means for the Godbeat.

Here’s what he told me:

Religion journalism is vital, just as local journalism is vital, and both are central here. Our newspaper recognized the importance of this story and committed to investing our time and resources into understanding the problem in its unique cultural context, then reporting and telling the story through word and image.

I think that having a background in covering the Plain churches helped me as I got to know and understand the sources in our stories. More than one reader has expressed appreciation that we maintained a respect for the Plain culture even while addressing how aspects of the culture itself can be factors in the abuse. (For example, the Amish and Mennonites are widely admired for their magnanimous forgiveness, but that same virtue has been used to pressure a victim into reconciling with a predator, and to spare the latter from the legal consequences of criminal acts.)

There can also be a multiplier effect when a news organization commits to religion journalism. A religion reporter can team up with other journalists on other beats, and they can build on each other’s expertise.


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Lots of edgy thinking about 'Weird Christianity' -- in The New York Times, no less

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I was going to let the “Weird Christianity” opus in The New York Times sail past, in part because I wondered if it was a bit too “inside baseball” for this audience.

Well, it is a major weekend piece in America’s most powerful newspaper and people keep asking me if I have seen it. I have also been asked — since it’s about people choosing ancient liturgies and non-binary politics — if this article is, in effect, about people like me.

Not really. This Times essay — by Tara Isabella Burton of The American Interest — is about a recent trend among young Americans. I am, well, old and I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy 20-plus years ago. I did drop my registration in the Democratic Party in 2016. Here is the double-decker headline on this essay:

Christianity Gets Weird

Modern life is ugly, brutal and barren. Maybe you should try a Latin Mass.

I think it’s important to note that this “Weird Christianity” term is not new and there’s more to it than a taste for smells and bells (as Burton makes clear). There’s no question that issues of culture and aesthetics play a role in this trend, but the key is doctrine. And this trend is pre-modern, not postmodern.

To see that in practice, check out this 2015 Christianity Today piece by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, now of the Washington Post (and also a former GetReligion contributor). In this case, the term is being used in a Southern Baptist and evangelical context, as in, “Russell Moore Wants to Keep Christianity Weird: The public-policy leader for the largest US Protestant denomination isn’t worried over Christians’ loss of power. He says it might just be the best thing to happen to them.”

But back to Burton and the Times. Here is a crucial chunk (long, but essential) of her first-person piece:

… I’m not alone. One friend has been dialing into Latin Masses at churches across the United States: a Washington Mass at 11 a.m.; a Chicago one at noon.

The coronavirus has led many people to seek solace from and engage more seriously with religion. But these particular expressions of faith, with their anachronistic language and sense of historical pageantry, are part of a wider trend, one that predates the pandemic, and yet which this crisis makes all the clearer.

More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith.


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This journalist did her job: Now she hopes that it didn't expose her to COVID-19

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Silvia Foster-Frau did her job.

The 27-year-old San Antonio Express-News reporter hopes her dedication to her profession didn’t expose her to COVID-19.

For more than two years, Foster-Frau has produced sensitive, nuanced coverage of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas — site of a Nov. 5, 2017, mass shooting in which 26 people died and 20 were wounded.

Her journalistic prowess has earned her honors such as Texas AP Star Reporter of the Year in the biggest newspaper category and the national Cornell Award for religion reporting excellence at mid-sized newspapers.

On Sunday, Foster-Frau returned to the rural area southeast of San Antonio to report on the Baptist church continuing to meet, “despite the potential danger posed by the novel coronavirus” — as she put it in her story.

Her news article was excellent. No surprise there. Equally impressive were the compelling images captured by Express-News photographer Josie Norris.

But given the concerns over the possible spread of COVID-19, I wondered about the decision to send journalists into an assembly with 40 worshipers, none of them wearing masks, according to the newspaper’s story.

Foster-Frau was kind enough to talk with me about her experience. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bobby Ross Jr.: You developed some really good relationships with people involved in the massacre and have excelled at covering that. Can you tell me a little about that?


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Fire at will, in a circle: What does 'pro-life' mean in the context of the COVID-19 era?

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The assertion of certain conservative politicians that abortion should not be considered “essential” surgery in a time of medical shortages is the latest twist in the ever-active “pro-life” news agenda. But different sorts of life debates lie ahead.

Writers on religion and ethics went to work when Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested on Fox News that it’s OK if senior citizens like himself need to die in this epidemic to ensure that their children and grandchildren have decent economic livelihoods. Radio talker Glenn Beck, a Latter-day Saint, agreed that he’d “rather die than kill the country.”

Even liberals who favor fully free choice for abortion and mercy-killing abhorred suggestions that incomes should count more than the sacredness of human life. Harvard’s Ashish Jha told The Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey that Patrick set up “a false dichotomy” between economics and public health, which is “possibly the dumbest debate we’re having.”

A related topic could be around the corner that journalists should be preparing to cover. In a word: Triage.

Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition: “The sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors.”

That is, in a crunch who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t? In the current crisis, what if intensive care units in a city’s hospitals run short of ventilators necessary to sustain life, as worst-case projections indicate could happen? Should advanced age be a criterion for withholding treatments? This is a nation that next January will inaugurate a president of age 74 (Donald Trump) or 78 (Joe Biden) or 79 (Bernie Sanders), alongside a likely House Speaker who is 80.


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