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Hey, New York Times editors: Did painful Thanksgiving dinners really begin in 2016?

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Apparently, no one knows where the saying came from, but by 1840 or so variations were appearing in etiquette guides: “Never talk about religion or politics,” especially at the dinner table.

This wisdom made the leap to popular culture in 1961, when the philosopher Linus commented in a Peanuts comic strip: ““There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people — religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.” The Great Pumpkin is, of course, a faith issue for Linus.

Now, with that timeline in mind, please consider this follow-up question: Before 2016, does anyone remember reading waves of mainstream news stories near Thanksgiving built on horror stories about bitter political arguments around the extended-family holiday table? I mean, surely loved ones in the past argued about Richard Nixon, the nature of the Trinity, Bill Clinton’s private life, the quality of the modern hymn “On Eagles Wings” or other hot-button topics in religion and politics (or both)?

What happened in 2016 that suddenly made this a must-cover issue in elite newsrooms? Maybe this topic suddenly became urgent, for some reason, among journalists who had escaped heartland zip codes and found their true selves by moving to New York City and Washington, D.C.?

The New York Times published an archetypal feature of this kind the other day that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

Families Have Been Torn Apart by Politics. What Happens to Them Now?

Unlike 2016, when conflicts emerged over political choices, this time many are centered on the legitimacy of the result itself.

The overture follows the formula that readers have seen dozens of times in the past four years.

Tho Nguyen’s parents, who immigrated from Vietnam, were always Republican. They are Catholic and oppose abortion. Four years ago they voted for Donald Trump.

But nothing prepared Ms. Nguyen, 25, a medical student in Kansas, for how much politics would divide her family over the next four years, as her parents became increasingly passionate about the president.


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Biden and the US bishops: Compromise crafted by 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick still in place

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Biden and the US bishops: Compromise crafted by 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick still in place

While doing groundwork for the pivotal South Carolina primary, Democrat Joe Biden went to a local church to do what he does on Sundays -- go to Mass.

What happened next made headlines, raising an issue that looms over the president-elect's personal and political lives. The priest at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Florence declined to give Biden communion.

"Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that," said Father Rev. Robert E. Morey, in a press statement. "Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching. As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care."

The priest, a former attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency, ended by saying: "I will keep Mr. Biden in my prayers."

Biden told MSNBC: "That's just my personal life and I am not going to get into that at all."

Nevertheless, Biden continued to make his faith -- he is a "devout" Catholic in news reports -- a key element of the campaign, as he has throughout his career. He also pledged to defend Roe v. Wade, to the point of codifying the decision into national law.

Catholic conservatives and liberals remain divided on how the church should respond, a tension demonstrated in a carefully worded statement by Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"The president-elect has given us reason to believe that his faith commitments will move him to support some good policies. This includes policies of immigration reform, refugees and the poor, and against racism, the death penalty and climate change," said Gomez, after the recent online USCCB meeting.

However, it is obvious that Biden's actions have clashed with "fundamental values that we hold dear as Catholics," the archbishop added. This includes supporting the federal funding of abortions, the return of the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate and passage of the Equality Act, a sweeping LGBTQ rights bill that could lead to "unequal treatment of Catholic schools," said Gomez.

"We have long opposed these policies strongly. … When politicians who profess the Catholic faith support them, there are additional problems. Among other things, it creates confusion among the faithful about what the Church actually teaches on these questions."


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Thinking about Thanksgiving and beyond: Always coronavirus winter, but never Christmas?

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I am very sorry, but I need to talk about the Baby Boomers.

Trust me, I know that Americans are tired of hearing about the 73 million or so Baby Boomers. I know this is true because I am a Boomer and I’m tired of hearing about us. As a 66-year-old gravity challenged male with asthma, it seems like every time I turn on the television there is an advertisement about some medication that I may or may not need — soon.

Then there is the coronavirus pandemic and that pushy #BoomerRemover trend in social media. However, it’s certainly true that millions of Boomers fall into multiple COVID-19 risk categories.

This brings me to a sobering think piece that ran the other day in the New York Times by former ABC News religion correspondent Peggy Wehmeyer, whose byline will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.

On one level, this was a piece about Thanksgiving. But it also points forward into the entire holiday season, underlining many of the painful choices facing Baby Boomer grandparents, their children and, yes, their grandchildren. Here’s the double-decker headline:

‘Gram, Are You Sad?’ This Year, We’re Spending the Holidays Alone

None of our grandchildren will be at our table for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But the pandemic winter still leaves room for the imagination.

Yes, there are valid news stories hiding in this piece and some of them are linked both to religious rites and to family traditions that, for millions, are linked to religious seasons. For starters, what will happen to Midnight Mass? In my own tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, what happens to those glorious meals breaking the Nativity Fast?

Wehmeyer turned to the fiction of C.S. Lewis for a powerful image for what is ahead and what millions of people will be feeling in the weeks ahead. Emotions will really be running high during the Christian season of Christmas, which begins on Dec. 25th and runs for 12 days.


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This week's podcast: It isn't 'fake news' to recognize that America remains a divided land

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This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was rather unusual. Instead of focusing on a specific bite of news, or a topic drawing coverage, host Todd Wilken and I spent most of our time discussing a new survey that I truly believe is worthy of coverage.

A key element of this study is the role that “fake news” plays in cleaving America into two warring cultures. However, that omnipresent term really isn’t defined. Apparently, when Americans think about “fake news” we are rather like U.S. Supreme Court justices contemplating pornography — they know it when they see it. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The key is that “fake news” has become the fightin’ word attached to the many ways in which a rising tide of advocacy media is tearing apart the foundation of American public discourse.

Here at GetReligion, we think that there is more to this than mere political bias. For decades, many — not all — American journalists have struggled to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of religious, moral and cultural issues (think “Kellerism”). This trend has now spread into other parts of American life, leaving far too many citizens, on left and right, locked inside concrete news and entertainment silos. For many citizens, the next step is to embrace conspiracy theories or even dangerous forms of rebellion.

All of these themes show up in the new study, “Democracy in Dark Times,” which is the 2020 edition of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s Survey of American Political Culture series. The team that produced it includes a scholar, sociologist James Davison Hunter, whose works — “Culture Wars,” for example — will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.

Think of it this way: This man wrote a book in 1994, a quarter of a century ago, entitled “Before the Shooting Begins.”

The new study, using terms central to Hunter’s book “To Change the World,” seeks to “understand not just the political weather, but the cultural climate shaping the election as well.” Here is a crucial passage — long, but essential — on the role advocacy media is playing:

The American public’s deep misgivings toward governmental and economic institutions extends to a suspicion of the media. Just over two-thirds (68%) of all Americans agree that “you can’t believe much of what you hear from the mainstream media,” and just under two-thirds (63%) believe that “media distortions and fake news” are a very or extremely serious threat to America.


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A news story? This is not a normal Thanksgiving, to say the least, but we can still give thanks

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Looking at lots of news, right now, I am not seeing stories about what is, for me, the most interesting angle of this unusual Thanksgiving.

It seems like American is divided into two warring clans — the “locked inside their home” Thanksgiving folks and the “damn the virus, full speed ahead” crowd.

There is, of course, another pandemic-season option, which is the one that my family and some people in our Orthodox parish will be trying. (If anyone is curious, the Orthodox here in America break our Nativity Lent fast on Thanksgiving — with the blessing of our bishops — so meat is back on the menu.)

Lots of us are being careful and will celebrate the main Thanksgiving feast with immediate family. Then, hours later, some will gather outdoors for what I am calling a “festival of leftovers.” People will bring their own turkey-ham sandwiches from home in baskets or bags. We won’t share food from different houses. Then we will have chips in individual-serving bags. Drinks will be in individual cans or bottles. Desserts will be packaged or boxed and we will use no common utensils.

Distanced seating will be on a deck, under a carport or all over the lawn (weather will be fine today here in East Tennessee). Guitars are encouraged. We will do everything we can to follow CDC guidelines.

I’m not arguing that this is a major news story, or anything like that. I don’t expect TV news crews.

I am saying that this is an example of a kind of third-way option during the pandemic-guidelines wars that have received so much ink.

It’s true that many churches are going online only. Then a few are rebelling against guidelines, period. Then there are the religious congregations that are quietly (in our case, following guidelines from our bishop) trying to do as much community life as they can, while following local and state rules. Yes, it does help if government leaders apply the same rules to religious groups as to similar institutions.

So rebelling is news. Got it.

So going to an online-only approach is news. Got it.

What about carrying on with life as much as possible, while following the rules? Is that a religion-beat story?


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Good grief! Why won't Hispanics vote like they're supposed to? (With Axios think piece)

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All together now: Good grief!

The other day I shared my frustration with readers, after enduring another elite newsroom story about the “shocking” trends among Hispanic voters in the 2020 elections. It turned out that quite a few Hispanics didn’t vote for Democrats the way that they were supposed to and it wasn’t just Cubans in Miami.

Of course there were economic issues involved. Of course there were efforts to paint Democrats as “socialists” or worse, using labels that really scare lots of voters in conservative Hispanic households (including Cubans, of course).

Of course, there are “religion ghosts” lurking in many of those memories of life in the old country.

Anyway, I wrote a post with this headline: “One more time — Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?” I noted that GetReligion has been running posts on this topic ever since the 2016 campaign in Florida, when there was evidence that evangelical Latinos helped make Donald Trump a winner there. As I said earlier this week:

There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando. Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties. …

Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough.

That post was about a New York Times political-desk story that was completely tone deaf to the religion angles in this important topic.

Now, low and behold, that Times team has gone and done it again — this time looking at Miami and its powerful Cuban community, in particular. The double-decker headline states:

How Hispanic Voters Swung Miami Right

Many expected that liberal young Hispanic voters would propel a Democratic wave. But Miami, a city where Hispanics hold the levers of power, confounded expectations.

It was more of the same, of course.


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Question: What is the world's worst government on religious liberty? Clearly, it's China

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THE QUESTION:

What is the world’s worst government in terms of restricting religious liberty?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

China. No contest.

That’s shown in an elaborate Pew Research Center accounting issued this month that covers all categories of official religion restrictions in 198 nations and territories as of 2018. The Communists who rule the world’s largest population expend incredible efforts on their atheistic crusades, and are equal opportunity offenders who attack both faith in general and a variety of specific religions.

Global religious conditions over-all are getting worse, Pew reports. It calculates there are other highly troublesome governments in this descending order of oppression: Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Syria, Russia, Algeria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Iraq, Morocco, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Brunei, Mauritania, Western Sahara and Yemen. (North Korea information is lacking).

Though Pew doesn’t say this, you’ll see most of the worst are Communist, or Muslim or post-Communist and Muslim.

Yet one of the most distressing crackdowns is in Buddhist Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma), with its forced displacement of at least 14,500 Rohingya Muslims. As with China’s mistreatment of Muslims, noted below, ethnic and religious enmity are combined.

Examples of other problems: Uzbekistan put at least 1,500 Muslims in prison on charges of extremism. Tajikistan’s new religion law gives the regime control over appointment of Muslim imams, religious education, and foreign travel, and there’s been a roundup of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thailand has arrested hundreds of Christian and Muslim refugees fleeing mistreatment in Pakistan and Vietnam. Methodist missionaries were forced out of the Philippines for investigating human rights abuses.

Pew separately lists countries on a “Social Hostilities Index,” referring to serious harassment of religions by private individuals and groups as opposed to governments (though governments often encourage or turn a blind eye to these problems). Here, India has the worst track record.


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The Atlantic offers faith-free take on this question: Should Down Syndrome kids be allowed to live?

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When is a religion story not a religion story?

When it covers a major moral question but does not make a connection with obvious religious themes and factual information. Here at GetReligion, we say that these stories are haunted by religion “ghosts. Basically, that’s an elephant in the living room that screams God involvement but the journalist has not been able to connect the dots, or appears to unwilling to do so.

The Atlantic just came out with a very thoughtful story on how Down Syndrome births are being eradicated in Denmark and why that should concern us all. And this feature story is overflowing with ghosts.

Every few weeks or so, Grete Fält-Hansen gets a call from a stranger asking a question for the first time: What is it like to raise a child with Down syndrome?

Sometimes the caller is a pregnant woman, deciding whether to have an abortion. Sometimes a husband and wife are on the line, the two of them in agonizing disagreement. Once, Fält-Hansen remembers, it was a couple who had waited for their prenatal screening to come back normal before announcing the pregnancy to friends and family. “We wanted to wait,” they’d told their loved ones, “because if it had Down syndrome, we would have had an abortion.”

Now, Denmark is known for its liberal abortion policies. In 2017, the Irish Times reported on how the Danish ambassador to Ireland had to state that no, it was not his government’s policy to eradicate all Down Syndrome births by 2030. Keep that in mind.

Back to The Atlantic story:

They called Fält-Hansen after their daughter was born — with slanted eyes, a flattened nose, and, most unmistakable, the extra copy of chromosome 21 that defines Down syndrome. They were afraid their friends and family would now think they didn’t love their daughter — so heavy are the moral judgments that accompany wanting or not wanting to bring a child with a disability into the world.

All of these people get in touch with Fält-Hansen, a 54-year-old schoolteacher, because she heads Landsforeningen Downs Syndrom, or the National Down Syndrome Association, in Denmark, and because she herself has an 18-year-old son, Karl Emil, with Down syndrome.


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One more time: Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?

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It’s one of the questions that I have heard the most from readers during the 17 years that GetReligion has been open for business: Why do you write so many posts — over and over — about the same errors and blind spots in mainstream news coverage of religion?”

Come to think of it, I have heard that question more than a few times from GetReligion writers.

Well, there are several reasons for this. We tend to write posts over and over when:

(1) The subject of these stories is really important in national or international news.

(2) The error, or the religion-news “ghost” we see, is really obvious and important.

(3) These errors are being made by journalists who are not religion-beat pros (think political-desk folks covering stories linked to religion). This points to the need for newsroom managers to hire more religion-news pros or to allow a religion-beat specialist to assist in reporting on topics of this kind.

So here we go again. The double-decker headline in The New York Times proclaimed:

Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas.

Democrats may need to rethink their strategy as the class complexities and competing desires of Latino and Asian-American demographic groups become clear.

If you have followed GetReligion for the past four years, you know that we have noted — many times — the rising importance of Hispanic evangelicals, including what appeared to be a strategic role in the 2016 election in Florida. There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando.

Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties.

Anyway, this latest Times story does deserve some praise for an accurate, and rare, use of “liberal” in a headline. Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough. Here is an early summary of the facts in this totally faith-free feature, which focus on the failure of a pro-affirmative action push in California:


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