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Any religion ghosts here? Martin Methodist College joins University of Tennessee system

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Any religion ghosts here? Martin Methodist College joins University of Tennessee system

For years, parents have been asking me a logical question, in light of my quarter of a century teaching in Christian liberal arts colleges and programs. The question: How do we know which college is right for our kid? They often link this to questions about how small colleges can compete in the modern marketplace.

Hang in there with me, since — for me — these questions are linked to the news coverage of an interesting higher-education story that is unfolding here in Tennessee.

In my experience, Christian liberal-arts colleges are not for everyone. The key is whether a private school’s academic strengths (most schools are stronger in some areas than others) match a student’s needs. It’s also important to know if an academic subject is a good fit with that school’s history and sense of mission.

This brings me to this recent headline in the Gannett newspapers here in Tennessee: “University of Tennessee adds fifth campus with Martin Methodist College merger.” Here’s the overture:

The University of Tennessee System has added a fifth campus, the first addition to the statewide higher education network in more than 50 years.

Martin Methodist College, located in Pulaski, will join the system as the University of Tennessee Southern, a nod to the regional identity the system hopes to create. The merger with Martin Methodist College is intended to bring affordable higher education to southern Middle Tennessee. The school is located about 75 miles southwest of Nashville, near the Alabama border.

The UT board of trustees unanimously approved the merger … after nearly a year of collaboration with Martin Methodist.

I’ve been following this story throughout the year and the coverage has, to use one of the defining images of this blog, been haunted by religious questions linked to this merger between a Christian college and a massive, secular university system. In this case, “haunted” means the coverage hasn’t mentioned these issues at all.

I am really curious to know what will happen to programs at Martin Methodist — academic and service oriented — that were linked to its Christian identity and ties to Tennessee United Methodists. I would imagine that there were also changes in some campus policies linked to moral and social issues.


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How will this Supreme Court decide, or sidestep, pivotal religious liberty questions?

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How will this Supreme Court decide, or sidestep, pivotal religious liberty questions?

The major U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Fulton v. Philadelphia (.pdf here) allows a Catholic agency to avoid placing foster-care children with same-sex couples. Importantly, the Catholics will place gay children and will place children with gay singles since there's no conscience crisis over defying the church's doctrines on marriage.

For decades there's been confusion and acrimony over the court's applications of the Constitution's ban on government "establishment of religion," but now disputes over the religious "free exercise" clause grab the spotlight. The Fulton ruling sidestepped the heart of this generation's conflagration between religious rights and LGBTQ+ rights and, thus, may even have added logs to the fire.

The justices backed the Catholic claim with what The Economist's headline correctly labeled "The 3-3-3 Court." The narrow technical grounds for the decision enabled the three liberals (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Maria Sotomayor) to make the ruling unanimous. The conservatives were split between three demanding a thorough overhaul of "free exercise" law (Justice Samuel Alito, in a vigorous 77 pages, joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas) and three unwilling to take the plunge at this time (Chief Justice John Roberts and the two newest members, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett).

Similar caution apparently underlies the court's majority decision this week not to review transgender student Gavin Grimm's victory against his Virginia school over bathroom access.

Journalists should prepare for more years of extensive -- and expensive -- politicking and litigation before the Supreme Court defines -- or decides not to define -- how First Amendment guarantees apply in 21st Century culture.

For those on the religion beat, it is easy to see that this case has hardened the related conflict among major denominations.


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ESPN's paean to Layshia Clarendon offers few details about basketball star's faith claims

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ESPN's paean to Layshia Clarendon offers few details about basketball star's faith claims

Several years ago, I was hiking in the woods on a mountain just outside of Seattle when I ran into two women hiking with an infant. The child was dressed in such a way that you couldn't tell whether it was a boy or girl and when I commented on the cuteness of the child, the women addressed the child as “they.”

Apparently, they’ll let their kid decide on its own which gender it is, an idea that struck me as harmful to the child. A kid needs to know who they are. That’s where I stand on that issue.

But this is, of course, one of the hottest topics in American journalism, and, thus, American life, today. Is gender simply a matter of choice, not DNA or destiny? Could you decide to be male or female simply by lopping off a few body parts or adding them?

Such thoughts came up when I read ESPN’s profile of transgender activist Layshia Clarendon, written by an ESPN staff writer who has posted “they/them” pronouns. As the writer enthused on Twitter: “I've never had the opportunity to write a story about an athlete with whom I share so many identities.” Um, OK. I’m trying to imagine a similar statement from an ESPN reporter covering a traditional religious believer.

I usually don’t go after the motivations of the reporter, but this story went beyond respect and dignity to pure advocacy and the non-subtle hint that those who question this woman’s journey are transphobic haters.

Here is the key for GetReligion readers. This feature also made a real effort to work Clarendon’s faith into the mix, including captions that referred to the basketball player’s belief in God, which is not something you find in most ESPN cover stories.

What exactly is that faith? The story tries to shed some light on that, while skipping over many details.

Getting through this feature is quite convoluted part because the writer’s determination to mix gender pronouns so thoroughly that the reader often could not determine to whom the reporter was referring. I know the article was trying to be sensitive to how Clarendon talks about herself, but what resulted was a jumble. The confusion was, we can assume, part of the message in this sermon.


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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

Something is missing from that riveting Washington Post report by Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb about Donald Trump’s battle with the coronavirus that may have been much more dangerous than the White House team let on.

The headline: “Inside the extraordinary effort to save Trump from covid-19.” This long feature was adapted from the upcoming book “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History.”

This is a story about Trump’s hubris that is, for a change, packed with on-the-record material. Thus, I kept waiting for a specific name to show up — but it never did. I was thinking, of course, about the “lighthouse parable” that I have shared many times here at GetReligion. If you prefer the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn't bark, that will work, too. Here is a flashback to that lighthouse tale:

Once there was a man who lived in a lighthouse on the foggy Atlantic. This lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts.

Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who lept from bed shouting, "What was that?"

Now, in my experience, when religious believers get really sick — especially if they are close to the “critical” stage — they will almost always send for their pastor. In a life-and-death situation ministers are a source of prayer, comfort and, often, sound advice (my late father spent the final decade of his ministry working as a hospital chaplain).

Thus, I kept waiting to see a reference to the Rev. Paula White, the charismatic megachurch leader who Trump supporters frequently called his spiritual advisors (click here for a Julia Duin post on White). There were other clergy who, in this case, were candidates to get a call from the White House, like the Rev. Franklin Graham, perhaps.


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Plug-In: Generations of indigenous children snatched from families and churches took part

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Plug-In: Generations of indigenous children snatched from families and churches took part

For 120 years, Canada took Indigenous children from their families and forced them into residential schools run by Christian denominations — a practice that didn’t end until 1996.

Now, the discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at two former residential schools have rocked America’s northern neighbor, and the aftershocks have spread to the U.S.

Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that it had found the remains of 215 children near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. And this week, the Cowessess First Nation reported locating more than 600 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.

The discoveries have brought a national reckoning over what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterizes as “a dark and shameful chapter” of the nation’s history.

“I’m ashamed as a White Christian. I’m ashamed of what we did,” Kevin Vance, a minister in Regina, Saskatchewan, told me earlier this month. “I’m ashamed of all the racism and genocide that we concocted and that we did it in the name of Jesus. That’s just unbelievable to me.”

But the dark history isn’t limited to Canada: The news there “has magnified interest in the troubling legacy both in Canada and the United States,” according to The Associated Press.

As Susan Montoya Bryan of the Associated Press reports, the U.S. government “will investigate its past oversight of Native American boarding schools and work to ‘uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences’ of policies that over the decades forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities.”

In the U.S. — as in Canada — Christian denominations are an important part of the story, notes veteran religion writer G. Jeffrey MacDonald, who wrote about American church-run boarding schools in 2018.

“The churches were not just complicit. They were participatory,” Christine Diindiisi McCleave, chief executive officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told MacDonald then. “They received federal funding and helped carry out the policy.”


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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

Whenever the Southern Baptist Convention gathers in times of trials and turmoil, one thing is certain -- someone will preach a sermon that makes a difference.

That's how Southern Baptists do what they do. These sermons may not produce as many headlines as SBC elections or fiery debates about hot-button social issues. But the sermons matter.

The big sermon during the 2021 convention in Nashville came at a logical moment -- when SBC President J.D. Greear gave his farewell address, just before tense voting to elect his successor.

In this "defining moment" address, the leader of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., offered a stinging quote about an elephant that has camped in the SBC fellowship hall.

"We have to decide," Greear said, "if we want our convention primarily to be a political voting bloc or if we want it to be a Great Commission people. … Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant, and the offspring does not look like our Father in heaven."

America is important, he stressed. But America is not the whole picture for believers striving to build churches around the world. "God has not called us primarily to save America politically. He has called us to make the Gospel known to all," said Greear.

Southern Baptists can agree that "no compromise should be tolerated" on crucial social issues, he said. And no one wants to stop defending the inerrant truth of the Bible.


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Newsy thinking about SCOTUS, sports images, religious liberty and the Sexual Revolution

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Newsy thinking about SCOTUS, sports images, religious liberty and the Sexual Revolution

Wait, you mean there was another important religion story during the traffic jam of stories about the right vs. further right showdown at the Southern Baptist Convention and America’s Catholic bishops arguing about Holy Communion, the Catechism and liberal Catholic politicos?

Obviously, I noticed headlines such as this one in the Washington Post: “Supreme Court unanimously rules for Catholic group in Philadelphia foster-care dispute.”

The word “unanimous” is certainly important, in the fractured age in which we live. But look for the other crucial word in the overture on that story:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously … that Philadelphia was wrong to end a Catholic group’s contract to provide foster-care services because the organization refused to work with same-sex couples.

It was the latest victory for religious organizations at the increasingly conservative court, and the second time it has ruled against governments trying to enforce an anti-discrimination law protecting LGBTQ rights against those claiming religious liberty.

But the opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was narrow enough to draw the support of the court’s three liberals — and the consternation of its three most conservative members for not going further.

Obviously, the crucial word is “but.” This ruling encouraged some church-state conservatives, but also provided some hope for those who believe that the Sexual Revolution will, more often than not, trump the free exercise of religion.

So, it’s time for two think pieces that explore the degree to which this ruling was a win for religious liberty.

No surprise here: Religious liberty pro David French, of The Dispatch, was encouraged: “Four Things You Need to Know After a Huge Day at SCOTUS — ‘Good night, Employment Division v. Smith. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning​.’ “ Here is his reaction, at the level of SCOTUS personalities:


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New podcast: What are the future news hooks as U.S. bishops wrestle with Holy Communion?

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New podcast: What are the future news hooks as U.S. bishops wrestle with Holy Communion?

Let’s say that, at some point in the future, multimedia crews manage to discover where President Joe Biden was attending Mass on a given Sunday.

As the president attempts to leave, journalists shout an obvious question, something like: "Mr. President! The U.S. bishops are almost done with the final draft of their document on abortion, politics and Holy Communion. Are you concerned about this?”

Recently, Biden responded to a similar question by saying: "That's a private matter and I don't think that's going to happen."

This kind of language, that specific doctrinal issues are “personal” or “private,” has been part of American Catholic code ever since the famous 1984 address at the University of Notre Dame by the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. But let’s say — as I suggested in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) — that Biden decides to tweek this reply at some point in the future.

What would happen if he said this: “That’s between me and my father confessor, so I will have no response at this time.”

This response would have several implications. First of all, it would mean that Biden is saying that he (a) has a father confessor, (b) that he has gone to confession, (c) that he has confessed his sins, (d) that his confessor has assigned him some for of penance and (e) absolved him of his sins. That last part, of course, could be assumed if Biden is receiving Holy Communion.

Oh, and there’s one implication here: That this is happening with a blessing, to one degree or another, from the bishop in authority over Biden’s father confessor. Ah, there is the main news hook.

The bishop and the priest would not, of course, discuss the contents of the president’s confessions. The bishop, however, could say that Biden’s ongoing actions clashing with church doctrines — linked to abortion, same-sex marriage, trans advocacy or some other issue — require the denial of Holy Communion since these actions are, under Catholic doctrines, a threat to the president’s eternal soul.

After all, as the journalists (and canon lawyers) at The Pillar recently noted:


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Don't neglect Mainline Protestants when analyzing, e.g., sexual abuse or Baptist turmoil

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Don't neglect Mainline Protestants when analyzing, e.g., sexual abuse or Baptist turmoil

Two blockbusters dominated the American religion beat last week.

The Catholic bishops defied a nudge from Pope Francis's Vatican and decided overwhelmingly to write a Communion policy that might target President Joe Biden and other pols for liberal abortion stances. And conservative establishment voters in a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) presidential showdown narrowly defeated (for now) hard-right populists.

Standard news judgment automatically puts the spotlight on hot disputes in the nation's two largest religious sectors — white evangelicalism and Catholicism. Meanwhile, week by week, year by year, the media consistently downplay the third-ranking religious category, "Mainline" Protestantism, which not so long ago exercised such vast cultural influence. (They also neglect fourth-ranking Black Protestantism.)

Two thoughtful new articles show intriguing ways to overcome sins of omission.

President Mark Tooley of the conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy asks, at the Juicy Ecumenism weblog, why Mainline churches apparently suffer fewer sexual abuse scandals than their evangelical rivals. And University of West Georgia historian Daniel K. Williams compares the turbulent Southern Baptists with their smaller and rarely covered Mainline rival, American Baptist Churches (ABC). [Disclosure: The Guy was happily raised in the ABC and remained a nominal member till age 30.]

"Mainline" refers to church bodies dating from Colonial and post-Revolutionary times that have been predominantly white, involved in ecumenical groups like the National Council of Churches and are either liberal on theology and politics or give liberals ample running room. The largest such denominations — often called the “Seven Sisters” — are the ABC, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church.

Tooley is a Methodist evangelical and major critic of liberal trends, so when he faintly praises Mainline performance this commands attention.


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