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Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair

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Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair

First things first: Readers need to know that Marvin Olasky has been a friend of mine for yearly three decades. If I was dangling off a cliff, I’d trust Olasky to hold the rope.

Through the years, Marvin and I have disagreed on many journalism issues and had some stimulating debates. For example: He was dead right when, in the first years of Internet life, he predicted that life in the digital world — think social media in particular — would undercut old-school standards of balance and objectivity in journalism. In GetReligion terms, think “Kellerism” and much of today’s New York Times.

Back to the present, and a pretty solid Times piece that is lighting up Twitter. Here’s the double-decker headline:

His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.

A clash over culture and politics comes to World, a groundbreaking journalistic institution that covers evangelical Christians.

There is, of course, no way to leave Donald Trump out of this story, with Olasky submitting his resignation (he was planning to retire next summer) after a coup in the World board after several years of tensions. Among the hot-button issues, readers learn, were COVID-19 masks and voter fraud (#DUH).

As I said, the story is pretty good, with Olasky — rare, this — portrayed in the elite press as a good guy. However, there is one statement that I need to challenge right up front:

At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.

Has the newsroom at World been “conquered by Trump”?

I would say that we do not know that, yet. It’s clear that the World board signed off on the creation of an ambitious World-branded commentary website — without Olasky’s approval as editor. But do we know that the news team will not bravely carry on with its work?

We do not know that, do we?


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Plug-in: Supreme Court questions inmate's demand for vocal prayers in Texas death chamber

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Plug-in: Supreme Court questions inmate's demand for vocal prayers in Texas death chamber

Last week, we set the scene for the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing of a religious freedom case involving a Texas death-row inmate.

This week, we summarize the mixed response justices gave in that inmate’s case.

Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman lays out the plot aptly:

If you give a man in a Texas execution chamber the right to a prayer, is he entitled to two?

Can he ask for candles?

Or Communion?

If the United States Supreme Court says a condemned man has the religious right to have his pastor touch his foot while the state injects a lethal dose of chemicals into his veins, then will the court also have to allow a pastor to touch a man’s hand, his head, or even the place where the needle pierces the skin?

The justices quizzed attorney Seth Kretzer about the slippery slope of death penalty prayer on Tuesday morning, as they weighed whether the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), passed by Congress in 2000, give 37-year-old John Henry Ramirez the right to have his pastor lay hands on him and pray aloud when the state of Texas puts him to death.

The high court was skeptical of the inmate’s “demand that his pastor be allowed to pray out loud and touch him during his execution,” according to The Associated Press’ Jessica Gresko.

Justice Clarence Thomas raised concerns “about inmates ‘gaming the system’ by asserting dubious religious claims that served to delay their executions, notes the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin.

The court “seemed divided,” explains the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes, who produced a “deeply reported and evocative” advance piece on the case, reporting from Corpus Christi, Texas.


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Private conversations, public debates: Concerning bishops, Joe Biden and Holy Communion

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Private conversations, public debates: Concerning bishops, Joe Biden and Holy Communion

Asked if he discussed abortion with Pope Francis during their recent Vatican summit, President Joe Biden said: "No, it didn't. It came up -- we just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic, and I should keep receiving Communion."

The next day, the Associated Press noted that Biden received Holy Communion at St. Patrick's Church in Rome.

Asked to validate the president's second-hand quotation, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters: "I would consider it a private conversation."

What do U.S. bishops think? That has remained a hot topic as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops braces for its fall 2021 meetings next week (Nov. 15-18) in Baltimore -- its first in-person assembly since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

What is labeled as "draft 24" of a proposed USCCB statement on "Eucharistic coherence" flashes back to an earlier controversy about Catholic politicians, Holy Communion and an atmosphere of "scandal" among the faithful.

"We repeat what the U.S. bishops stated in 2006: 'If a Catholic in his or her personal or professional life were knowingly and obstinately to reject the defined doctrines of the Church, or knowingly and obstinately to repudiate her definitive teaching on moral issues, he or she would seriously diminish his or her communion with the Church," said this draft from late September -- first obtained by The Pillar, a Catholic news website.

The quote continued: " 'Reception of Holy Communion in such a situation would not accord with the nature of the Eucharistic celebration, so that he or she should refrain.' "

As insiders have predicted, this draft of "The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" doesn't mention debates about the sacramental status of Catholic politicians who have consistently served as advocates for abortion rights, such as Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It does, however, connect some dots on this subject, while drawing from the writings of Pope Francis.


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Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

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Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

This week’s think piece is more than think piece. It’s more like a shudder, shake your head and even weep piece. Then you can think about it.

I am referring to a long, first-person piece that ran the other day at The Pillar and it’s causing lots of buzz in Catholic online life, for good reason. The headline doesn’t really tell you what is coming: “Cleveland priest gets life. Victims’ mother: ‘God is with us'.”

The first-person voice is essential and steers this away from hard-news territory — even though there are facts and news hooks buried inside the narrative. That’s the “thinking about it later” or thinking about it on the re-read side of this piece.

It’s really long, but you have to start at the beginning, with this editorial note:

Cleveland priest Fr. Robert McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, after the priest pled guilty to federal child trafficking, child abuse, and child exploitation charges.

McWilliams, 41, was ordained a priest in 2017. He was arrested in 2019, and pled guilty to federal charges in July of this year.

At his Nov. 9 sentencing hearing, the mother of four boys preyed upon by McWilliams urged a life sentence. That mother and her family told The Pillar their story.

The Pillar team also made the editorial team to change the name of the family and the victims, in order to protect their privacy.

In terms of the story itself, here are three moments — starting at the beginning:

“Ok. I love my Church, I love my family. I want my Church to be healed. Ok.”

When Rachel Christopher … begins to tell her family’s story, she usually starts with a few phrases — a litany, really — that remind her who she is, and what really matters.

This time, I think, she’s using them to remember why she is sitting down with a stranger — sitting down with me — to share the kind of painful memories that no parent wants even to imagine.

Rachel is telling the story of the priest who hurt her children.


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New podcast: Left, right, middle? Two giant U.S. seminaries are pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate

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New podcast: Left, right, middle? Two giant U.S. seminaries are pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate

Let’s do a COVID-19 religion-news flashback, looking at a storyline or two near the start of the pandemic.

I’m doing this in order to analyze how the press is framing a major new development — the federal-court lawsuit filed by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Seminary challenging the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate. These are, by the way, two of the largest seminaries in the United States and, while other seminaries are collapsing, these two are growing.

Coverage of this lawsuit was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. (CLICK HERE to tune that in.)

So now the flashback. Remember when I was writing — at GetReligion and in my national “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate — about the vast majority of American religious groups who were caught in the middle of the “shelter in place” and lockdown wars linked to COVID-19?

Remember the Catholic priests in Texas who were trying to hear confessions out in the open air (in a big field and parking lot), while following guidelines for social distancing? Or how about the churches that were under attack for holding services in drive-in movie theaters, with the faithful in cars, while it was OK for folks to be in parking-lot scrums at liquor stores and big box super-marts? Then you had the whole casinos are “essential services” while religious congregations were not “essential.”

I argued, at that time, that this was way more complicated than religious people who cooperated with the government and those who didn’t. This was not a simple left vs. right, good vs. bad situation. In fact, there were at least FIVE different groups to cover in these newsy debates:

They are (1) the 99% of religious leaders who cooperated and took worship online, (2) some religious leaders who (think drive-in worship or drive-thru confessions) who tried to create activities that followed social-distancing standards, (3) a few preachers who rebelled, period, (4) lots of government leaders who established logical laws and tried to be consistent with sacred and secular activities and (5) some politicians who seemed to think drive-in religious events were more dangerous than their secular counterparts.

That’s complicated stuff.

The problem is that, in the world of American politics, things have to be crushed down into left and right templates or even, there for a few years, into pro-Donald Trump and the anti-Donald Trump. I’m sure we’re past that last part. Right?


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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

This is a bad time to be a house of worship in the United States, as crazed people are vandalizing and damaging these places in record numbers.

For some time now, this blog has complained about the increasing trend in Catholic churches being vandalized across Europe –- and now here in the United States -– and the secular media barely noticing it. Recently, Religion News Service picked up on the phenomenon of the wreckage happening to Catholic churches.

(RNS) — It was after a pair of Catholic churches caught ablaze last summer, one in Southern California and another in Florida, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to start documenting and tracking vandalism at Catholic sites across the country.

The two fires occurred on the same morning: July 11, 2020. One destroyed the rooftop of the historic San Gabriel Mission — the fourth of a series of missions across California that Father Junipero Serra founded during the Spanish colonization era. The other ignited in Queen of Peace Catholic Church as parishioners prepared for Mass in Ocala, Florida.

Nobody was injured, but Aaron M. Weldon — of the USCCB’s Office of Religious Liberty — said the fires were “the impetus for us to start monitoring these sorts of events.”

Since then, the USCCB has tracked more than 105 incidents of vandalism of Catholic sites in the U.S., including arson, graffiti and defaced statues. The organization has logged news reports of such incidents dating back to May 2020, but it doesn’t yet have a detailed breakdown that categorizes the different kinds of vandalism.

May 2020 was the fateful month of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officers and the start of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that saw a frenzy of property destruction around the country. (A year later, the Wall Street Journal noted last May, crime in Minneapolis is over the top.)

New FBI stats show the number of hate crimes (8,263) reported in fiscal year 2020 was the highest since 2001. Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,244 offenses, and more than half (683) were antisemitic.

While only 73 were anti-Catholic hate crimes, that represents an annual increase since 2013. There were 64 anti-Catholic hate crimes reported in 2019, and 51 in 2018, according to the FBI data.

The story pointed out that the Catholic Church have been in the news lately for reasons for reasons ranging from Joe Biden’s presidency to whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should be barred from Communion. But Catholics were in the news far more in 2002, when the clergy abuse scandal burst into open, and churches weren’t getting vandalized at such rates then.

Other than the Wall Street Journal, other major media haven’t spotlighted this trend at all.


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United Methodist pastor dives into HBO drag-queen culture, drawing joyful RNS applause

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United Methodist pastor dives into HBO drag-queen culture, drawing joyful RNS applause

Religion news consumers who have been alive for a few decades are probably aware that — on issues related to the Bible and sexuality — United Methodists are, in fact, not united.

Anyone looking for deep background on that topic can turn to a classic document from the mid-1980s entitled “The Seven Churches of United Methodism.” Click here for the first of two “On Religion” columns I wrote about the continuing relevance of that report, which was written by Duke University sociologist Robert L. Wilson, who died in 1991, and William Willimon, now a retired bishop.

Of course, there are bipartisan plans for a United Methodist divorce that would create a more LGBTQ-friendly version of the current denomination and a global Methodist body that would retain traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality. Hold that thought.

Every now and then, Religion News Service — one of the definitive sources for news on the Christian left — produces a news report that perfectly illustrates just how divided Methodists are on edgy issues related to sexuality. This brings us to the following dramatic double-decker RNS headline:

Meet the United Methodist pastor featured on HBO’s drag reality show ‘We’re Here’

Performing in drag was an ‘incredibly wonderful, refreshing, deepening, powerful spiritual experience,’ said Pastor Craig Duke of Newburgh United Methodist Church in Indiana.

Let me note, right up front, that this story opens all kinds of doors to discussions of the two doctrinal approaches that — on issues of biblical authority and a host of other issues — can be found in the current United Methodist Church. However, the story includes absolute zero voices from Methodists on the traditional side of these debates — even from members of the pastor’s own congregation who can be expected to ask questions about his TV leap into the world of drag culture.

Here is the overture to this advocacy-journalism report. This is long, but essential:


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Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

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Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

A potential U.S. evangelical crack-up continues as a lively story topic since Guy Memos here since these two Memos here at GetReligion, “Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up?” and also “Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues.” In USA Today, Daniel Darling, for one, sought hope despite his recent victimhood in these tensions.

Media professionals considering work on this theme should note a lament at book length coming next week: "Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay" by Dan Stringer. The author is a lifelong evangelical, Wheaton College (Illinois) and Fuller Theological Seminary alum, leader of InterVarsity's graduate student and faculty ministries in Hawaii and Evangelical Covenant Church minister. This book comes from InterVarsity Press.

The Guy has yet to read this book, but it looks to be a must-read for reporters covering American evangelicals in the Bible-Belt and elsewhere. Stringer ponders how evangelicalism can move beyond too-familiar sexual scandals, racial and gender conflicts, and Trump Era political rancor -- what a blurb by retired Fuller President Richard Mouw calls "blind spots, toxic brokenness and complicity with injustice."

Regarding the Donald Trump factor, the evangelical elite was largely silent, with one faction openly opposed, while certain outspoken evangelicals backed the problematic populist.

As The Guy has observed, recent politics exposed the already existing gap between institutional officials and the Trumpified evangelical rank and file. Problem is, to thrive any religious or cultural movement needs intelligent leaders united with a substantial grass-roots constituency to build long-term strategy.

Evangelicalism has always combined basic unity in belief with a wide variety of differences. Think denominational vs. independent, Arminian vs. Calvinist, gender "complementarian" vs. "egalitarian," Pentecostal-Charismatic vs. others and a racial divide so wide that many Black evangelicals shun the e-word alltogether.

In an October 21 Patheos article, historian Daniel K. Williams at the University of West Georgia added North vs. South to those internal divisions. He recounts that the Southern Baptist Convention remained mostly apart when northerners began to supplant "fundamentalism" with "evangelicalism" in the World War II era. Eventually, he says, this movement formed a North-South alliance but it's now eroding.


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Dang it! Your GetReligionistas pounced a bit too early on the 'parental rights' wars

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Dang it! Your GetReligionistas pounced a bit too early on the 'parental rights' wars

Dang it (said the Texas Baptist preacher’s kid), I really hate it when GetReligion gets to a serious media topic Just. A. Bit. Too. Early.

What am I talking about?

Well, take a look at the New York Times headline featured in the tweet at the top of this post, a tweet authored by a symbolic figure in the wider world of Democratic Party life. Michael Wear is a political consultant, but he is best known as the faith-outreach director for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign and then as part of Obama's White House staff. Here’s that headline:

Republicans Seize on Schools as a Wedge Issue to Unite the Party

Rallying around what it calls “parental rights,” the party is pushing to build on its victories this week by stoking white resentment and tapping into broader anger at the education system.

First of all, I think the verb “seize” is a stand-in for the world “pounce,” which has become a bit of a cliche in recent years. Here is the Urban Dictionary take on the “Republicans pounce!” phenomenon or click here for a National Review essay on the subject. The whole point is that the issue at hand isn’t really all that important, but conservatives have “pounced” on it and are using this alleged issue to hurt liberals in social media, conservative news sources, etc.

Major media on the coasts, of course, avoid covering the topic — unless it leads to an embarrassing defeats for Democrats in a symbolic state like Virginia.

Anyway, the Times headline may ring a bell or two for those who read this October 22 podcast-post here at GetReligion: “Are 'parental rights' references (inside scare quotes) the new 'religious liberty.” Here is the opening of that post:


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