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Where will American religious groups fit into the newly electrified abortion debate?

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Where will American religious groups fit into the newly electrified abortion debate?

The U.S. Supreme Court's agreement to review Mississippi's strict abortion law means that the public argument on this unending dispute will be the most intense in many years -- with a ruling due right in the midst of the 2022 election campaign.

Despite the Court's increased conservative majority, there's no certainty it will clamp new restrictions on abortion. Yet it's also possible that the Court might overthrow its own 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized most abortions nationwide in 1973.

If so, the impact will be momentous but not quite as apocalyptic as "pro-choice" advocates suggest. Abortion would remain widely available because decision-making would simply be returned to democratically elected state legislatures and many would maintain liberal policies. Charities might aid women in the "pro-life" states needing travel for out-of-state abortions.

For those covering the religion beat, the coming year is a major defining moment as America's variegated denominations state what they now believe about the morality of abortion and why.

After the Roe ruling, the 1976 conventions of the two major political parties began setting opposite stances. The Democrats' platform acknowledged that many Americans had "religious and ethical" concerns but opposed a Constitutional amendment to bar abortions. Similarly, the Republicans' platform stated that some in the party favored the Supreme Court's edict, but advocated such an amendment "to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."

Religion writers well know how that basic split hardened and reshaped religious voters' political alignments. There's been less attention to the way the advent of open abortion turned around the Social Gospel thinking of Protestant liberals.


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Another trial by media: In defense of Mother Teresa and why she is a saint, not a 'cult leader'

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Another trial by media: In defense of Mother Teresa and why she is a saint, not a 'cult leader'

Historical figures are going through another mass-media reckoning. They have been for some time. Some with good reason.

Christopher Columbus? Understandable given what was unleashed by his arrival from Europe.

Thomas Jefferson? A paradox that’s worth examining given his ability to pen the Declaration of Independence and also own slaves. In some cases, there is evidence that he fathered children with them.

Other figures haven’t been so obvious. Following the tragic murder of George Floyd last May, many statues were toppled or removed across the United States, including those of 18th century Spanish priest Junipero Serra, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. These weren’t so obvious to explain. I’m not sure those who damaged them knew either.

This takes me to the latest reckoning: Mother Teresa, now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Yes, that Mother Teresa. The diminutive woman who dedicated her life to helping “the poorest of the poor” in India. And the same one who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and Pope Francis canonized a saint in 2016. Turns out she was a cult leader.

Michelle Goldberg penned an opinion piece in The New York Times, which ran Saturday on its website, under the headline: “Was Mother Teresa a cult leader?”

With a headline like that, is it possible the thesis will be that she wasn’t?


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Are religious and culturally conservative groups silenced on the Internet?

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Are religious and culturally conservative groups silenced on the Internet?

Not all religious believers are conservatives.

I get that. But many are and not a few in this group have seen their posts frozen out of Facebook and other social media simply because some moderator thinks they’re spreading hate speech (which is usually posts defending centuries of Christian doctrine).

Big Tech has gotten reamed on this by members of Congress (which they seem to ignore) on the grounds of crushing political dissent. But what about religious views?

The National Catholic Register recently posted this thoughtful story about how the silencing of religious views (and the morality that emanates from them) affects Catholics who number some 51 million U.S. citizens or one-fifth of the population. This is not a small group. Here’s how the feature begins:

Lila Rose is no stranger to the tactics social-media giants Facebook and Twitter employed in banning former President Donald Trump from their platforms.

As head of the pro-life group Live Action, Rose has seen the organization she founded permanently banned from Pinterest, barred from advertising on Twitter and its entire TikTok account temporarily removed for unnamed “community violations.”

Rose gained some fame for her sneaking into abortion clinics as a teenager, posing as a girl seeking an abortion while recording everything with a video camera in her backpack to later accuse Planned Parenthood of looking the other way on statutory rape. She’s pictured with this post.

In remaining engaged on social media, where she and Live Action have a combined total of 5 million followers, Rose said she sticks to her message and tries to follow each platform’s guidelines. When an issue arises, she attempts to determine whether it was the result of a misunderstanding or mistake before pursuing a challenge.

“If you don’t have a clear case, saying you do when you don’t is not helpful,” she said. “I would caution people that just because your post is not getting a lot of shares or likes or you lost followers doesn’t mean it’s a nefarious scheme to destroy you. It’s important to have a lot of common sense and be thoughtful and discerning about whether this is truly the case.”

Still, for Catholics and others with conservative views, examples of Big Tech’s heavy hand abound, providing plenty of reasons to be concerned about access to social media.


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tmatt is far, far from his office desk: But the other GetReligionistas will carry on this week

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tmatt is far, far from his office desk: But the other GetReligionistas will carry on this week

Let’s see.

How do I do this?

I need to channel the online style of Bobby Ross, Jr., the master of the short, punchy post in which a few short sentences quickly lead into tweets, photographs and bullet points.

So, the point of this little post is that I am gone for a week, or as gone as the Internet allows me to me. I am not even going to write an “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate.

But GetReligion will stay open and you will see familiar bylines here all week. I may post a think piece at some point.

But let me offer some visual clues as to my location.

So I have departed my home in these lovely mountains:


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Plug-In: What 'Never Trumper' Russell Moore's departure from ERLC means for SBC

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Plug-In: What 'Never Trumper' Russell Moore's departure from ERLC means for SBC

Religion News Service national writer Bob Smietana picked up one Moore big scoop this week.

Back in March, Smietana broke the internet with news of Beth Moore no longer identifying as a Southern Baptist.

This week, Smietana — one-time “longhaired, hippy wannabe songwriter” turned highly content religion reporter — was the first to confirm the embattled Russell Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The ERLC’s president since 2013 will join Christianity Today, the influential evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham in 1956. He’ll “serve as a full-time public theologian for the publication and … lead a new Public Theology Project.”

At the Washington Post, religion writers Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein point out that Russell Moore “blasted former president Donald Trump and his evangelical fans.” His ERLC resignation prompts questions about the SBC’s future:

Moore’s departure from the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) follows other high-profile exits from the denomination, including popular Bible teacher Beth Moore (no relation) and Black pastors. Some evangelicals are wondering what their departures signal about the direction of the convention, which has included louder voices on the far right in recent years.

Read additional coverage from The Tennessean’s Holly Meyer, the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Lovett and GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly.

Also, if you can’t get enough of Smietana and the Southern Baptists, check out this piece on “the grievance studies hoaxer and atheist” who is “on a crusade against what he sees as a ‘woke’ invasion of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.”


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Bob Dylan turns 80, while Dylanologists keep arguing about signs of faith in his art

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Bob Dylan turns 80, while Dylanologists keep arguing about signs of faith in his art

Night after night, Bob Dylan's 1979 Gospel concerts at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre made news for all the wrong reasons, according to angry fans.

The November 11th show opened with Dylan roaring into "Gotta Serve Somebody" from "Slow Train Coming," the first of what Dylanologists called his "born-again" albums.

"You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief," he sang. "They may call you doctor, or they may call you chief, but you're gonna have to serve somebody. … Well, it may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody."

To add insult to injury, these concerts included fiery sermons by Dylan, while he avoided classic songs that made him a legend.

"I was 19 years old and that was my first Dylan concert," recalled Francis Beckwith, who teaches Church-State Studies at Baylor University. "The atmosphere was highly charged. Some people booed or walked out. … There were people shouting, 'Praise the Lord!', but you could also smell people smoking weed."

Beckwith kept going to Dylan concerts, while following years of reports about whether the songwriter was still a Christian, had returned to Judaism or fused those faiths. These debates will continue as fans, critics, scholars and musicians celebrate Dylan's 80th birthday on May 24th.

With a philosophy doctorate from Fordham University in New York and a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Beckwith is certainly not a conventional music critic. He made headlines in 2007 when -- while president of the Evangelical Theological Society -- he announced his return to Catholicism.

To mark that birthday, Beckwith is publishing online commentaries on what he considers Dylan's 80 most important songs. The Top 10: "Like a Rolling Stone," "My Back Pages," "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Visions of Johanna," "Tangled Up in Blue," "Blowin' in the Wind," "Precious Angel," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) and "Desolation Row."

Beckwith considered three factors -- popularity, lasting cultural significance and, finally, whether each song was "something I could listen to over and over." He stressed that Dylan's entire canon includes images and themes rooted in scripture and faith.


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Still thinking about (trigger alert) a scary Twitter topic -- Elizabeth Bruenig and motherhood

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Still thinking about (trigger alert) a scary Twitter topic -- Elizabeth Bruenig and motherhood

At this point, I am a bit confused. What is the latest Twitter firestorm about Elizabeth Bruenig, the latest New York Times talent to hit the exit door for one reason or another? I may have missed a controversy or two in recent weeks.

You see, I am still stuck on the furor that greeting that essay published (May 7) just before she left the Gray Lady, the one with that terrifying headline: “I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m not Sorry I Didn’t Wait.”

I’ve been thinking about that one ever since and, thus, I have decided to treat it as a weekend think piece. But part of me still wants to argue that there was some kind of news feature that could have been written about that whole affair.

Yes, it was another example of folks in the blue-checkmark tribe losing their cool because someone triggered the urban, coastal principalities and powers. Can you say “fecundophobia”? However, this essay was also linked to some huge trends in postmodern America, especially crashing fertility rates and declines in the number of people getting married. There was news here, of some kind.

First, here is the Bruenig overture:

If someone had asked on the day of my college graduation whether I imagined I would still be, in five years’ time, a reliable wallflower at any given party, I would have guessed so. Some things just don’t change. What I would not have predicted at the time is that five years hence I would be lurking along the fringes of a 3-year-old’s birthday party, a bewildered and bleary-eyed 27-year-old mom among a cordial flock of Tory Burch bedecked mothers in their late 30s and early 40s who had a much better idea of what they were doing than I ever have.


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Catholic News Agency looks at GetReligion (including why Catholics still care about news)

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Catholic News Agency looks at GetReligion (including why Catholics still care about news)

There is no “Crossroads” post this week, in part because various people — including me — are engaged in long-awaited in what I think used to be called “vacations.” In my case, I will be trading the lovely mountains of East Tennessee for my old stomping grounds — the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

If you want to check out some podcasts, by all means click here to head into our online library or go to Apple Podcasts and sign up for the automatic feed.

In place of a podcast, I think GetReligion readers — old and new — will want to check out a new Catholic News Agency feature — “GetReligion points out 'ghosts' in religion reporting among mainstream media“ — about the history of GetReligion and why we keep doing what we do. Here’s the overture:

The news-checking website GetReligion.org is in its 18th year of looking for “ghosts” in mainstream media. The “ghosts,” as co-founder and current editor Terry Mattingly calls them, are holes in news coverage that exist either because the media does not want to cover the religious aspect of a story or because the reporters are unaware that a religious component is present.

“The goal was to openly advocate for an old style, liberal approach to journalism where you are striving for accuracy and striving to let people on both sides of controversial issues have their voices heard in a way that is accurate and shows them respect,” Mattingly said.

GetReligion was founded in 2004. Mattingly and fellow co-founder Douglas LeBlanc set out to dissect news coverage and brought with them a number of experienced religion writers, including Richard Ostling, Ira Rifkin, Julia Duin and Bobby Ross. Together, they hoped to shed light on the inconsistencies in religion reporting or religion bias in the news.


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Mainstream press shrugs at Biden's Notre Dame snub for upcoming graduation rite

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Mainstream press shrugs at Biden's Notre Dame snub for upcoming graduation rite

This is the time of year where college graduations dominate the lives of many Americans. A year after these ceremonies were relegated to Zoom because of the pandemic, graduations are back this spring, with masks and social distancing in place, to again signal the sending off to undergraduates into the workplace.

For journalists, graduations have long served as an easy news stories. Above all, the graduation speaker is what makes these ceremonies news. At that vast majority of rites at elite and state schools the speaker is — to one degree or another — a cultural or political liberal.

Thus, is it any surprise that the ongoing tug-of-war between the U.S. bishops and President Joe Biden has spilled over into the graduation season? Well, it has in the form of the president not addressing graduates at the University of Notre Dame this year.

This news story was broken by Catholic News Agency. Here’s how the May 11 news story opened:

In a break with recent tradition, President Joe Biden will not be delivering the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame this year – although he was invited by the university to do so.

On Tuesday, the university announced that its May 23 commencement speaker will be Jimmy Dunne, a finance executive and trustee of the university. During the last three presidential administrations, U.S. presidents or vice presidents have addressed the university's commencement in their first year in office, but that trend will not continue in 2021.

Although a university spokesman told CNA that, as a policy, “we do not discuss who may or may not have been approached to address our graduates,” sources from the White House confirmed to CNA that Biden had indeed been invited by the university but could not attend due to scheduling.

Biden, just the second Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, has not been shy about mentioning his faith in public.

While he’s attended Mass regularly on Sundays, Biden supports taxpayer-funded abortion in defiance of the U.S. bishops’ conference and, as vice president, he performed two same-sex marriage rites. The Biden administration has also started to roll back restrictions on public funding of abortion providers, has supported the expansion of LGBTQ rights and continues to wage a legal battle to keep a mandate in place for doctors to provide gender-transition surgeries.


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