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Crucial question in all those newsworthy abortion debates: When does life begin?

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Crucial question in all those newsworthy abortion debates: When does life begin?

THE QUESTION:

When does life begin?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Those four words are regularly posed in the current abortion debate, so let's scan the lines in pregnancy that have been drawn by experts — religious and secular — in the past.

Pre-scientific cultures spoke of "quickening," typically between 16 and 18 weeks, when the mother first feels the unborn child moving in her womb. A famous example involves the unborn John the Baptist in biblical Luke 1:41. Some ancient Jewish authorities in the Talmud, and Roman and Greek philosophers, supposed that the unborn child "formed" earlier, at 40 days.

Then there's "viability," when a fetus can live on its own outside the womb, typically reached around 23 or 24 weeks, or somewhat earlier or later in individual cases. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion before that point in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and after viability when there are risks to the mother's health, broadly defined.

The high Court on December 1 hears a case from Mississippi, which defied the Roe ruling and bars abortions after 15 weeks on grounds that the fetus experiences pain by then. A Missouri law, also under court challenge, puts a ban at eight weeks when "everything that is present in an adult human is now present in your baby," according to the American Pregnancy Association. The Court temporarily left in place a ban in Texas (likewise in 13 other states) after six weeks, when pulsations can be diagnosed at what eventually becomes the fully formed heart.

Many modern Christians believe that life begins at conception (sperm first meets egg) or implantation (fertilized egg attaches to the mother's womb) while some put the line a bit later at twinning (after which multiple pregnancies do not occur).

Note the brief filed last month in the Mississippi case by pro-choice religions including "mainline" Protestant churches, non-Orthodox Judaism, Unitarian Universalists and others. It says "numerous religious traditions posit that life begins at some point during pregnancy or even after a child is born."


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New podcast: Those Southern Baptist sex-abuse battles are not just about Southern Baptists

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New podcast: Those Southern Baptist sex-abuse battles are not just about Southern Baptists

The Southern Baptist Convention’s ongoing fights about how to handle sexual-abuse claims against ministers and other church personnel and volunteers is a perfect example of the kind of story that drives newspaper editors crazy.

It’s big and complicated and it seems like something crazy or important (or both) happens every other day. But it also seems like it’s impossible to yank a big, dramatic headline out of this sprawling, complicated story.

The story never seems to end and the amount of background material needed — in story after story after story — makes it impossible to cover this stuff in tidy 500-word stories. But if a newsroom skips a few of the major developments, that makes it even harder to get back in the game and explain to readers what is happening. Oh, and did I mention that newsroom managers pretty much have to assign a reporter to this story full-time or near full-time? That’s expensive in this day and age. Obviously, this reporter has to have religion-beat experience and speak fluent Southern Baptist.

At the same time, in my experience, there will almost always be one or two editors who say (or think) something like this: “I know the SBC is huge and there are billions of dollars involved and we have lots of Southern Baptist churches (and maybe a college) in our news territory, but … I don’t ‘get’ why this story really matters to average readers. I mean, it’s not about sports or politics or something important (to me).”

As a Charlotte editor once told me, when I was poised to break a national-level SBC story in the early 1980s: Nobody reads this stuff but fanatics and every time you write about it we get too many letters to the editor.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focuses on why the SBC’s struggles with sexual-abuse are important, and NOT just to Southern Baptists (click here to tune that in). The key is to identify major stories LINKED to sexual-abuse scandals that involve ethical, moral, legal and theological issues that can be seen in religious groups of all kinds (and many secular nonprofits and organizations as well). To illustrate this, let me tell you a story about an important evangelical counseling pioneer — the late Dr. Louis McBurney, founder of the Marble Retreat Center in Colorado.


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Pope's preferred airline goes bust: Alitalia's demise way more than a business story

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Pope's preferred airline goes bust: Alitalia's demise way more than a business story

I have many fond memories of family trips to Italy that took place each summer during my childhood. Those summer pilgrimages to visit family and friends also included connecting with the place of my parents’ birth as well as seeing some of the country’s stories sites.

Visiting Vatican City for the first time in 1990 (when I was 14) remains one of the best memories. I would visit there again numerous times — including as a news reporter — in the decades that ensued.

Those New York-Rome trips involved flying with Alitalia, Italy’s national carrier. The airline — known for its nearly-impeccable safety record and sometimes appalling customer service — will officially close on Oct. 15. The announcement, made this past summer, marks the end of an era for an airline founded in 1946. it also marked the end of an era for my family, who were loyal to this brand to a fault.

Why is this a topic for GetReligion?

The airline’s demise and the start of a new one named ITA is a business story with a religion angle that too many news organizations ignored over the past few weeks. There was plenty of coverage regarding ITA buying new planes, potential layoffs and Italian government subsidies that kept the airline afloat for decades.

That religion angle? You see, my family and I weren’t the only loyal Alitalia customers over the years. The most famous has been the pope. It was in 1964, when Pope Paul VI traveled to Israel, when Alitalia became the pontiff’s official airline.

Alitalia put on plenty of miles under the papacy of now-St. Pope John Paul II, who visited 129 countries during his 27 years as head of the Roman Catholic church. The plane used by the pope — known in the press as “Shepherd One” as a way to compare it to the president’s “Air Force One” — continued to be used by Pope Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis. It’s also aboard these flights that the pope holds a news conference and always makes news.

Alitalia and the papacy will forever be intertwined.


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Keeping up: Ongoing 'woke' pronoun wars reach into the world of God-talk

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Keeping up: Ongoing 'woke' pronoun wars reach into the world of God-talk

This Memo is a twofer, offering both a lively story theme to pursue plus an issue that is now affecting the work of every stylebook and copy editor in the American media.

An older campaign by feminists — including those working in the world of liturgy — sought to shun male pronouns, particularly when either gender is meant, in favor of plural they-them-their usage with singular antecedents. This increasingly common wording is of course grammatically incorrect given the structure of the English language, and can be confusing for readers.

That's now combined with the effort of transgender and "non-binary" advocates to suppress gender-specific adjectives by applying that same "singular they" along with newly crafted pronouns. A list of such neologisms recommended at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said to be non-exhaustive, covers ae, e, ey, fae, per, sie, tey, ve xe, ze and zie. So, for example, with "xe" the variants to parallel she-her-hers-herself are xem-xyr-xyrs-xemself.

As you would expect, references to God himself -- or is that "themself"? -- is now part of this debate.

Religion News Service ran a column last week from one of its regulars, Mark Silk, headlined "Why our preferred pronoun for God should be 'they'." He thinks calling God "they," not "he," and similar verbal tactics have become "imperative."

How would other progressives respond? His proposal was immediately publicized in a tweet from RNS's Catholic columnist, Jesuit Father Thomas Reese and the online comments began flowing.


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Lots of Latter-day Saints are going liberal? Washington Post story tries to make that case

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Lots of Latter-day Saints are going liberal? Washington Post story tries to make that case

Back in late 2010, I began a seven-year stint of freelancing for the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine to help fill a gap in coverage of conservative religion. I wrote about Pentecostal serpent handlers, a female Jewish ambassador from Bahrain and the Orthodox Church of America’s rather controversial metropolitan, among other things.

Then sometime in 2017, a new editor came onboard and, after running my story on Paula White (which made quite a splash I might add), simply refused to respond to any more of my emails. “There goes in-depth religion coverage,” I thought, and turned to other markets.

But lo and behold, the magazine just ran a piece about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about a “battle for the future of Mormonism.”

Basically this article makes the case that the Mormons are veering left on gay issues. The reporter visits a very liberal congregation in Berkeley, Calif., and some conservatives in Rexburg, Idaho, considered a traditional Latter-day Saint bastion.

Not to my surprise, the reporter, in support of this thesis, only cites people in both locations who are gay or gay-friendly.

It felt like the reporter had a predetermined goal for the story that just needed the right quotes to scaffold it. Why? I see all the interviews going in one direction: Committed, serious believers who have come to the conclusion that many Mormons are secretly quite liberal. Here at GetReligion, we call this “Kellerism,” a nod to the teachings of a former New York Times editor.

Part of the story is based on an amazing — and inaccurate — assumption.

More so than in other conservative religious institutions, liberals — or at least those disaffected from conservatism — are making their presence known inside and on the perimeters of the church, provoking something of a Latter-day Saint identity crisis.


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Elephant in sanctuary: Spot the news hooks in shocking changes facing Cincinnati Catholics

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Elephant in sanctuary: Spot the news hooks in shocking changes facing Cincinnati Catholics

Let’s do the math. When discussing the future of the American Catholic Church, Joe Biden isn’t the biggest issue on the table. Biden’s liberal Catholicism may be a symptom of larger issues — and since it’s political, it’s easier to cover — but it isn’t the issue that’s going to lock the doors of many parishes from coast to coast, but especially in blue culture zones.

The big issue? Actually, it’s several connected issues — and the elephant in the living room (or sanctuary) is that links them. Hold that thought.

The obvious issues? The priest shortage. Declining enrollment rates in Catholic schools. Closed parishes. You can also add declining Mass attendance numbers in many, but clearly not all, parishes. I would add the collapse in the number of Catholics going to Confession.

This brings us to a very important Cincinnati Enquirer story with this headline: “'Change is difficult': Cincinnati Archdiocese launches shakeup that reaches almost every parish.” Here’s the overture:

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati … launched one of the most ambitious reorganizations in its 200-year history, potentially changing when and where almost a half-million Catholics attend Mass, school and other activities connected to their faith.

Known as Beacons of Light, the restructuring process will combine the archdiocese’s 208 parishes into 60 “families of parishes,” which will begin sharing priests and resources as early as next year.

Unlike past attempts to remake the archdiocese, which rarely got out of the planning stages, Beacons of Light is backed by Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and will in some way touch almost every Catholic and priest in the archdiocese’s 19 counties.

The goal, church officials say, is to eventually unite the 60 new parish families into single parishes.

So, the goal is 60 parishes instead of 208?


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How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

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How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

Welcome to Nashville, Liam Adams.

Enjoy the journalistic whiplash.

Adams, The Tennessean’s new religion writer, has received quite an introduction to the Godbeat in Music City.

Upon starting his new job last week, Adams immediately found himself covering two days of high-profile meetings by the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee.

He’s back at it this week, reporting on the committee again delaying “action on a third-party investigation into the committee’s handling of sexual abuse claims.”

“So I’m going to take a guess that this isn’t normally what happens in the Southern Baptist Convention, right?” Adams joked on Twitter. “Asking for a friend who just so happens to be in his second week reporting the news on all of this.”

Elsewhere, Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana report that the “presidents of all six Southern Baptist seminaries have issued statements or tweets expressing their dismay at the Executive Committee’s unwillingness to act at the convention’s direction.”

According to Baptist News Global’s Mark Wingfield, new details have emerged about the committee’s handling of the investigation, “as outrage mounts among other Southern Baptist leaders.”

Read additional coverage by The Associated Press’ Holly Meyer (Adams’ predecessor at The Tennessean) and Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt.

For more context, see our past Plug-ins — here, here and here — focused on the Southern Baptist controversy.


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Death of a post-theist shepherd: The unorthodox faith of Bishop John Shelby Spong

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Death of a post-theist shepherd: The unorthodox faith of Bishop John Shelby Spong

Newark Bishop John Shelby Spong never stuck "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" on the doors of Canterbury Cathedral, since it was easier to post a talking-points version of his manifesto on the Internet.

"Theism, as a way of defining God is dead," he proclaimed, in 1998. "Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity."

Lacking a personal God, he added, it was logical to add: "Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way."

Spong's 12-point take on post-theism faith emerged after spending years on the road, giving hundreds of speeches and appearing on broadcasts such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Larry King Live." While leading the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, within shouting range of New York City, he did everything he could to become the news-media face of liberal Christianity.

By the time of his death at the age of 90, on Sept. 12 at his home in Richmond, Va., Spong had seen many of his once-heretical beliefs -- especially on sex and marriage -- normalized in most Episcopal pulpits and institutions. However, his doctrinal approach was too blunt for many in the mainline establishment, where a quieter "spiritual but not religious" approach has become the norm.

Spong called himself a "doubting believer" and said he had no problem reciting traditional rites and creeds because, in his own mind, he had already redefined the words and images to fit his own doctrines. He also knew when to be cautious, such as during Denver visit in the late 1980s -- an era in which the Diocese of Colorado remained a center for evangelical and charismatic Episcopalians.

After a lecture at the liberal St. Thomas Episcopal Church, I asked Spong if he believed the resurrection of Jesus was an "historic event that took place in real time."

"I don't think that I can say what the disciples believed they experienced. I'll have to think about that some more," he said, moving on to another question.


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Does church attendance reduce political polarization? Not among White conservatives

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Does church attendance reduce political polarization? Not among White conservatives

There are some concepts in political science that have just become impossible to ignore. Whether it’s leading a classroom discussion, talking to a member of the media, or just chatting with friends about the current state of the world, I can’t help but bring it all back to political polarization.

Put simply, it’s the idea that American society has become more politically tribalized, with Democrats huddled in the far left corner of the political spectrum and Republicans doing the same on the right side of the scale with a huge chasm between the two. And, the two parties loathe each other — not just disagreeing, but believing that if the other party wins an election, it will lead to the end of the Republic.

Compromise becomes impossible in a world in which you see the other side not only as wrong, but also as the enemy. The inherent problem is that our democratic processes grind to a halt without a level of bi-partisan support.

There’s been a ton of great research done on measuring the level of polarization in the United States Congress by using DW-NOMINATE scores. The results indicate that both parties have moved away from the center, but that is more pronounced among the GOP than among the Democrats. This visual (it comes from this paper) is one I use in class to show just how bad it’s gotten.

But, I wanted to take a different approach here. I wanted to see just how much polarization is perceived by the average American, how that has changed over time, and how religion plays a role in that perception.

Here’s how I did it.

Since 2012, the CCES has asked respondents a battery of questions that require them to place the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and themselves on an ideology scale running from 1 (very liberal) to 7 (very conservative), with the moderate option described as “middle of the road.” For my purposes someone has a polarized view of the world if they describe either the Democrats as “very liberal” or the Republicans as “very conservative.” In essence, they are saying: “that political party can’t get any more extreme.”


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