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Obvious question: Maybe Christian faith played a role in the Scott Drew and Baylor hoops story?

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Obvious question: Maybe Christian faith played a role in the Scott Drew and Baylor hoops story?

Frankly, I am not the most enthusiastic of Baylor University alums (I once passed up a request to apply for a faculty slot by telling the president that I had already died once in Waco wasn’t anxious for a reprise).

Still, you didn’t think that the Baylor basketball team was going to win the national championship (after being a favorite in the COVID-canceled 2020 dance) without a word of comment here? I mean, I have heard from other Baylor grads who worked their way through lots of the mainstream news coverage of the March Madness finale while thinking “ghost,” “ghost,” “another religion ghost.”

Yes, this was the Texas Baptists vs. Jesuits matchup that hoops fans wanted. And then you had the simple reality that Baylor (for better and for worse) is the world’s most prominent Baptist academic institution.

But how could the press ignore or short-change the fact that the story of coach Scott Drew and his underdog Bears was packed with valid religion facts and themes? Would all fans care that Final Four MVP Jared Butler teaches a Sunday School class for little kids? Probably not. But millions of people would.

But they key to everything was this big question: Why was Drew at Baylor in the first place? Why did he pack up and head to Waco 18 years ago, when the program was dead, dead, dead or worse. Here’s the top of a long CBS Sports feature: “Scott Drew never let others change his story, path or program, and that's how he led Baylor to its first title.”

Leaping into the arms of his staff. College basketball's happiest coach on his happiest night. When it was over, Drew brought everyone into a huge circle on the court. They kneeled and said a prayer.

The greatest program reinvention in men's college basketball history was complete.

Drew took the Baylor job in 2003 when the program was near disintegration. The job Drew's done at Baylor in the 18 years since -- impressive is an understatement. There was no set of instructions when he got there, because there wasn't even a drawer to put them in. This was not a rebuild; what Baylor could be, in 2003, was a figment of Drew's imagination.

Drew is described in all kinds of upbeat, but strange, ways. This is one happy, upbeat, positive-thinking weirdo. Does it matter that, when he describes his bond with Baylor, he talks in terms of Christian faith, family and a sense that God called him to this job? Is that part of this national news story, just because Drew says so and there is tons of evidence that he means it?


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Hail to the resurrection of the Religious Left, creating media blitz No. 175 (or thereabouts)

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Hail to the resurrection of the Religious Left, creating media blitz No. 175 (or thereabouts)

The Easter season 2021 came with legacy media belief in the resurrection -- of the Religious Left.

Since Jerry Falwell (Senior) emerged from the underbrush, how many times have we read forecasts that religiously inspired political liberals will supplant the political prominence and influence of the Religious Right? This must be something like round 175.

The latest, headlined "Progressive Christians Arise! Hallelujah!", emerged from the word processor of Nicholas Kristof, who treats religious themes more often than fellow New York Times commentators — except David Brooks and Ross Douthat.

The Religious Left, so prominent in the New Deal days and the anti-war and civil rights efforts of the 1960s, never went away. Witness the perpetual political pronouncements from the “Seven Sisters” of Mainline Protestantism, for example the United Methodist Church lobby headquartered across the street from the U.S. Capitol and next door to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Journalists need to carefully evaluate these claims because renewed political impact by a Religious Left would loom large on story agendas. What's the evidence?

Kristof pins hopes heavily upon Democrats with religious leanings "moving onto center stage" as follows. Catholic President Joe Biden is a faithful churchgoer (unlike Donald Trump). Veep Kamala Harris regularly "attended" Baptist churches (but note the past tense). Senator Elizabeth Warren "taught" Sunday School (another past tense). Senator Cory Booker and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg "speak the language of faith fluently." And media star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Catholicism "inspires" her radicalism.

The column also touts troubles on the right. Some of those rabid U.S. Capitol rioters invoked religion.


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Season 2 of 'The Chosen' arrives on TV screens on Easter. Where was the news coverage?

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Season 2 of 'The Chosen' arrives on TV screens on Easter. Where was the news coverage?

Back in the day when I was covering religion fulltime, I always knew I could score a front page story if I prepared a large feature for Easter Sunday. That was always the day that my editors were looking for “something religious” to please the church-attending readers. Other reporters did this as well, as it was one of the few days in the year that our work could shine.

Lots has changed, obviously, judging from the front pages of some of the newspapers I perused this past Easter Sunday. My former employer, the Houston Chronicle, had nothing local. Ditto for the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Oregonian and even the Salt Lake Tribune –- usually reliable to at least run something Latter-day Saint related — came up short.

One bright light: Up river from the Oregonian, the Vancouver Columbian ran a huge spread Easter Day on St. Luke Productions, a Catholic theater company (that I’ve written about here and here) that’s based in southwest Washington and travels the country doing amazing portrayals of Catholic saints. See, it can be done.

A few outlets ran a pope-observes-Easter wire story from the Associated Press, but that was it. I looked at the Washington Post, which had a bit more, including a story about a local church opening up for the first time since COVID-19 started plus a piece on how pandemic-ravaged Italy is observing Easter.

The New York Times ran a mishmash of opinion pieces, including one from an English prof who wasn’t sure if Jesus had resurrected or not and one from a prof from Wheaton College urging readers to remember Easter is more than a spring celebration. There was a jewel of a piece on Jesus’ wounds and — in the Times wedding section — a beautifully photographed story about a Nigerian-American couple whose first kiss was on their wedding day. The story was snark free; a true Easter miracle.

I know it’s a challenge to come up with original Easter (and Passover) story ideas year after year, but it can be done and many of us did it.

Most of the religion content I saw yesterday was relegated to the opinion pages and kept away from news content, which is a troubling shift from religion-as-news to religion-in-the-realm-of-feelings. There’s plenty of the former available, but where’s the will to dig out those stories, especially the biggest one that happened yesterday that no one reported on?

That was the premiere of Season 2 of filmmaker Dallas Jenkins’ very successful “The Chosen” TV series. It’s the first multi-season TV series about the life of Christ, and 74,346 people raised $10 million for Season 1, which came out last year. That amount made “The Chosen” the largest crowdfunded media project –- ever.


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This just in! Millions of folks are sort of religious, a key to church membership decline

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This just in! Millions of folks are sort of religious, a key to church membership decline

When it came to poll numbers about religion and American life, the late George Gallup, Jr., wasn’t all that interested in many of the most obvious questions.

As he told me in several telephone interviews, starting in the 1980s: The religion numbers just don’t add up. You could see the same sentiments in some of his public addresses.

Gallup — who died in 2011 — wasn’t impressed by the high numbers of Americans who told pollsters that they believe in God, attend worship services on a regular basis and say that faith is “very important” in their lives. That didn’t seem to fit with national patterns of divorce and family breakdown. He kept trying to find ways to ask questions that focused on the role of religious faith in daily life.

When push came to shove, Gallup was convinced that about 20% of Americans were seriously practicing some form of religious faith. The number might be lower than that.

Thus, that recent blitz of news about church membership trends. As the Washington Post headline stated: “Church membership in the U.S. has fallen below the majority for the first time in nearly a century.” Here’s some of the overture:

The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup. … It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent. …

In 2020, 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. The polling firm also found that the number of people who said religion was very important to them has fallen to 48 percent, a new low point in the polling since 2000.

Click here for the Gallup report on these findings, old and new. Here is another summary from 2019. And here is some additional background from the new Gallup release:

Gallup asks Americans a battery of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year. The following analysis of declines in church membership relies on three-year aggregates from 1998-2000 (when church membership averaged 69%), 2008-2010 (62%), and 2018-2020 (49%). …

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference.


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Plug-In flashbacks: Several religion-news questions and answers with Bobby Ross, Jr.

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Plug-In flashbacks: Several religion-news questions and answers with Bobby Ross, Jr.

GetReligion readers really don’t need an introduction to religion-beat veteran Bobby Ross, Jr.

After all, he has been a contributor here since 2010 — which is longer than anyone other than the founders of the blog. There’s about 15 million words in our files, at this point, and Ross has to have written about 25% of them. And don’t forget that his wife, religion-beat veteran Tamie Ross, was a contributor here for several years, as well.

Bobby, of course, covered religion and all kinds of other topics for The Oklahoman and also spent several years with the Associated Press, working with religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, which is as good a credential as you can get. These days, readers around the world know him as editor-in-chief at The Christian Chronicle. He continues to write his weekly Plug-In feature for Religion Unplugged, which still runs here at GetReligion.

As a re-introduction to Ross, Religion Unplugged recently ran this short Q&A with him (and offered a short list of some of his top recent Plug-in pieces). I thought GetReligion readers who have followed him for a decade or more would like to see them.

You've covered religion since 1999. How did you first get onto the beat, and what's a favorite story you reported in your early days?

I had covered a religion story or two in my career up to then, including writing a 1994 piece about the Christian conversion of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But in 1999, the editors at The Oklahoman assigned me to cover Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis. That was an important and challenging assignment, and my favorite story probably was the one I wrote about a big youth rally where dc Talk sang "Jesus Freak" to an "arm-waving, hip-shaking, foot-stomping" crowd before John Paul appeared on stage, and the decibel level got even louder.

As the news industry has changed since you began your career, the religion beat has certainly changed too. What's been the biggest challenge you've faced as a religion reporter because of these changes?


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'I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die' -- A sobering message to church leaders on mental health

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'I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die' -- A sobering message to church leaders on mental health

The first time Sarah J. Robinson tried to kill herself was eight months after she became a born-again Christian.

She had struggled with suicidal thoughts since elementary school. She would imagine jumping into highway traffic or fill her hand with pills and consider swallowing them. But her depression only deepened after she was baptized as a teen and poured herself into Bible studies and upbeat youth-group projects.

She felt like a failure. Finally, she pressed a knife harder and harder into her skin -- but she couldn't force herself to end it all on the kitchen floor. Looking back, she wrote: "I didn't want my family to find me there, so I got up and put the knife away. I climbed into bed, put on a worship CD, cursed God and went to sleep."

Robinson kept stacks of journals and they provided crucial material for "I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die," a book written during three years of struggle and research. Her battles with depression have continued, even during her years working as a youth minister.

Images of handwritten pages appear in the book, including this 2007 plea: "Lord, I'm struggling. I need your help. This week has been really rough -- I've been sad & lonely & angry & numb. I cut myself and berated myself, wished for the end, tried so hard to hide it. I'm not just empty -- I've become a vacuum, taking on more and more of the absence of your presence. … God, please don't let me be lost."

It was hard to be that vulnerable, said Robinson, reached by telephone in Nashville. But including actual journal pages "seemed like a no-brainer" if the goal was to "let other people who are hurting know they are not alone. I wanted them to know that I've been there -- in that kind of midnight."

Among secular researchers, it's common to find two views of mental-health issues, said Robinson, citing the work of Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck. The first is a "fixed mindset" that assumes these conditions are predetermined and unchangeable. Thus, "setbacks and failures reveal who we really are and will always be," said Robinson." The second is a "growth mindset" that says individuals can adapt and change.

In pews and pulpits, many believers simply assume all mental-health struggles represent a lack of faith. Strugglers will be healed if they dedicate themselves to Bible study and prayer, while turning away from their sins. Church-based "pastoral counseling" is an option.

"The idea is that if I put the right things into the spiritual vending machine, then I'll get the right things out," said Robinson.


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Big question linked to Easter: Does Christianity believe in 'the immortality of the soul'?

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Big question linked to Easter: Does Christianity believe in 'the immortality of the soul'?

THE QUESTION:

Does Christianity believe in the “immortality of the soul”?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

No.

Not exactly. And before anyone has a heart attack reading that, The Guy hastens to explain that Christianity has always vigorously affirmed the Easter message that earthly death is followed by everlasting life. But the oft-used phrase about a mere “immortality of the soul,” which stems from ancient Greek philosophy, could suggest bodily life is problematic and mistakenly suppose that our soul exists through all eternity as only a disembodied spirit.

Instead, Christianity teaches that just as Jesus arose bodily from the grave, so the promise of everlasting life involves a person’s eventual resurrection that unites the soul with the body in a newly glorified state. As with the central belief that Jesus was God incarnate in full human and bodily reality, this Christian affirmation about the afterlife proclaims that, as in Judaism, our bodies are God’s good creation and fundamental to each person’s human identity.

This understanding of New Testament teaching was defined orthodoxy as early as A.D. 180 in Against Heresies by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, an authority and saint for Catholic and Orthodox Christians:

“… It is manifest that the souls of his disciples also, upon whose account the Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God, and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose” (from book 5, chapter 31).

A precise Protestant formulation appears in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Presbyterian credo from 1647 (here “men” refers to both genders):


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New podcast: Rising tensions between religious liberty, pronoun wars, academic freedom, etc.

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New podcast: Rising tensions between religious liberty, pronoun wars, academic freedom, etc.

My name is Terry Lee Mattingly. However, when I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, I took the name of a patron saint — St. Brendan the Navigator.

Let’s pretend that I am young and attending a state university right now and that I have decided to require professors to address me as “Holy St. Brendan the Navigator.” It is, after all, my name. While we are at it, let’s say that all of the Catholic and Orthodox students take the same tack, if their saint names are different then the names they were given at birth.

Some professors would wince, but go along with this. But let’s say that one professor is very secular, a Marxist perhaps, and he refuses — stating that my request violates his personal convictions. I threaten to sue, along with other students in the same situation. Game on.

How would the leaders of this taxpayer-funded public university respond? Would this be treated as a natural request on my part, with the understanding that any refusal would attack my sense of identity? What if I requested that my university ID card state my name as “St. Brendan the Navigator”?

It’s a crazy question, of course. But it would — at a state university — raise issues about the First Amendment (free speech and religious liberty) and academic freedom. These questions were at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast discussion. Click here to tune that in. [This episode also includes a bizarre gaffe when — I’m wrestling with a painful medical condition right now — I messed up my own saint’s name, mixing St. Brendan’s title with that of St. Nicholas of Myra. Listen for it.]

At the heart of the podcast discussion is a timely question: Can the state force the professor to recognize and even affirm — with public speech — beliefs that violate his conscience?

Now, as readers probably guessed right from the get go, this podcast focuses on another matter of personal identity — the degree to which professors can be forced to cooperate with students who chose to use any of the myriad and evolving gender pronouns linked to the LGBTQ+ movement. We looked at a Washington Post story with this headline: “A professor was reprimanded for refusing to use a transgender student’s pronouns. A court says he can sue.”

Now, when these clashes take part in PRIVATE schools — left or right, religious or secular — it’s clear (pending passage of the Equality Act) that these doctrinally defined institutions have a right to create belief and lifestyle covenants that settle issues of this kind. Students can chose to affirm these beliefs, freely signing on the dotted line, or go to school somewhere else.

But what about state schools built and operated with tax dollars?


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March Madness in pandemic: Why it's fitting that Gonzaga is poised to win NCAA title

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March Madness in pandemic: Why it's fitting that Gonzaga is poised to win NCAA title

A stroll through the European paintings gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City brings you face-to-face with dozens of masterpieces. Among them is an altarpiece by the Italian Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, commonly known as Guercino.

The piece depicts the celebration of Luigi (also known as Aloysius) Gonzaga, who resigned his inherited title of marquis (he was a member of a prominent Renaissance-era family) to become a Jesuit in 1585 in order to care for the poor in Rome.

Gonzaga died in 1591 at the age of 23 as a result of the plague. He was canonized a saint in 1726.

What does this painting and the man it depicts have to do with March Madness?

Turns out a lot. Gonzaga (the saint) and Gonzaga (the basketball team) are two different things. Nonetheless, the patron saint of Christian youth — who then died serving the poor in a pandemic — can help inspire a team to the final prize. Indeed, it would be only fitting that Gonzaga win it all after the year of COVID-19. And during a college basketball season when historical powerhouses such as North Carolina and Duke are not in contention, Gonzaga could very well capture its first national championship.

It’s no surprise that a Catholic university is among the heavy favorites this season in men’s hoops. After all, Catholic centers of higher education are no strangers to winning the NCAA Tournament. Villanova did it as recently as 2018.

Leading the pack is undefeated Gonzaga, runners up in 2017, who are undefeated so far this season. The school, located in Spokane, Wash., was once considered an underdog capable of defeating high-ranked teams, has reached the tournament every season since 1999. They have advanced to the Sweet 16 on six consecutive occasions.


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