Thursday, April 24, 2025

USA Today

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Yes, there were overlooked religion angles in today's biggest U.S. political news story

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Yes, there were overlooked religion angles in today's biggest U.S. political news story

Well what do you know. Evangelical Anglicans and the Salvation Army had a big night in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

That’s probably not the first thing that leaps to mind today, for political junkies who spent most of the night (the World Series finale was a big deal) watching political pundits express shock and, sometimes, grief watching a Republican newcomer upset name-brand Democratic Party candidate.

Lots of people talked about Donald Trump, of course. Some people dug a bit deeper and focused on how governor-elect Glenn Youngin managed to affirm some themes from the Trump revolution, while striving to stay as far away as possible from personal contact with Orange Man Bad.

This brings me to a headline this morning at A Journey Through NYC Religions, which is one of those niche-news websites that many religion-beat pros have in their browser favorites — because of its heady mix of hard facts and hard-to-label commentary.

Here’s the headline: “Faith trumps Trump in Virginia.”

Say what?

I think many journalists would assume — if they thought about religion angles in the Virginia race — that the members of the victorious GOP team probably came from White megachurches. But that’s not what veteran editor Tony Carnes found when he looked for the ties that bind, in this case. Here is his overture:

Most of the media attention in the Virginia elections has been on Trump and his influence. The Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe tried unsuccessfully to tag his opponent Glenn Youngkin as a Trumper.

However, under the surface of politics, there was a deeper spiritual culture and social network that connected the top three candidates in Virginia. This characteristic made the GOP effort in Virginia more winsome (indeed, that is the first name of Winsome Sears, the next Lieutenant Governor.)


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That question again: What's happening to religious believers and others stuck in Afghanistan?

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That question again: What's happening to religious believers and others stuck in Afghanistan?

This is a case in which I don’t want to say, “We told you so,” but – well — we told you so.

If you dug into this recent podcast-post — “ 'What's next in Afghanistan?' Warning: this news topic involves religion” — you’d know that the GetReligion team has been worried about what will happen to elite news coverage of human rights issues and, specifically, religious freedom, in Afghanistan under this new Taliban regime. In fact, that podcast included many themes from an earlier GetReligion podcast-post with this headline: “When the Taliban cracks down, will all the victims be worthy of news coverage?”

It appears that there are two problems.

Reality No. 1: It’s hard to cover the hellish realities of life in the new-old Afghanistan without discussing the messy exit of U.S. diplomats and troops from that troubled nation. Thus, new coverage will please Republicans, who are infuriated about that issue, and anger the White House team of President Joe Biden, which wants to move on. New coverage allows Republicans to “pounce,” as the saying goes.

Reality No. 2: There are many valid stories inside Afghanistan right now, but some are more explosive than others in terms of fallout here in America. This is especially true when dealing with stories about Americans who are still trapped there. Then there are religious believers — including Christians and members of minority groups inside Islam — who face persecution and even executions because of their beliefs. It appears that some journalism executives (and foreign-policy pros) continue to struggle with the reality that religious issues are at the heart of the Afghanistan conflict.

Thus, cases of political and religious persecution in Afghanistan are “conservative news.” For a quick overview, see this National Review piece: “In Afghanistan, ‘Almost Everyone Is in Danger Now.’ “ Note this snarky line:

The sort of headline that shouldn’t just be local news. … Those knee-jerk Biden critics over at . . . er, the Connecticut affiliate of NBC News report: “43 Connecticut Residents Still Stuck In Afghanistan.”

Here is a key chunk of that NBCConnecticut.com report:


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People have been asking: Is the COVID vaccine the Bible's sinister 'mark of the beast'?

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People have been asking: Is the COVID vaccine the Bible's sinister 'mark of the beast'?

THE QUESTION:

Is the COVID vaccine the biblical "mark of the beast"?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Many odd anti-vaccination rumors with murky origins are floating around social media, alarming healthcare workers as they combat a virus that has killed 720,000 Americans and counting.

Take the "mark of the beast" claim. The Guy can confidently answer "no" to this question, based upon the strong consensus among Bible experts, both those who take the Bible portion at issue -- Revelation chapter 13 -- literally and those who follow symbolic interpretations.

The beast, identified with the famously sinister number "666" and the "mark," is found in the final book of the Bible, whose images have always been subject to a wide variety of fanciful interpretations. Over the centuries, some have identified the beast as the pope, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler and many other leaders.

Let's clear the ground just a bit.

There are five basic ways to understand the last 18 chapters of this "revelation of Jesus Christ" to "his servant John."

* A "preterist" says the imagery depicts past events that faced early Christians living under the Roman Empire.

* The "historical" school sees church scenarios across the centuries.

* A "futurist" insists these are literal events that still lie ahead of us.

* The "spiritual" school advocates a symbolic presentation of realities with no specific historical application, past, present, or future.


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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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When talking about vaccines, shame isn't going to change minds in many pews

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When talking about vaccines, shame isn't going to change minds in many pews

Donald Trump had to know it was coming, even if – to use a Bible Belt expression – he was preaching to his choir.

"You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms," he said, at a rally in Cullman, Ala. "You got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it – it's good."

Videos of this August 21 event make it clear that quite a few people booed this request by the former president.

Truth is, the longer a health crisis lasts, the more pollsters will find that anti-vaccine citizens have "turned into true believers" who are rock-solid in their convictions, said political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University. He is co-founder of the Religion in Public website and a contributor to the GetReligion.org weblog I have led since 2004.

"At this point, the holdouts are the only people that (pollsters) have to talk to. … They've heard everything, and nothing is moving the needle for them," he said. "In fact, it seems like whatever you say to try to change their minds only makes it worse. These hardcore folks are digging in their heels all the more."

When exploring the most recent Data for Progress poll numbers, it's hard to nail down a religion factor in this drama. As summer began, 70% of non-evangelical Protestants had received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine – but so had 62% of both evangelical Protestants and Catholics. As the author of a book entitled "The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going," Burge found it significant that only 47% of the religiously unaffiliated reported receiving at least one shot.

"Religion may be a factor, for some people, but it's not the main thing" causing Americans to be reluctant, he said. "Age is clearly the No. 1 factor, even when you factor in politics. Young Republicans and independents are the same. …


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So ... where are the hidden converts to Christianity in Afghanistan? Can reporters find them?

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So ... where are the hidden converts to Christianity in Afghanistan? Can reporters find them?

There’s an online discussion happening now among religion writers about all the uncovered religion angles of the current mess in Afghanistan.

The crux of the Afghanistan quagmire is religious, not simply political. It’s not just some guerrilla group taking over the country. It’s a radical Islamist group that aims to drag Afghanis back to the 7th century. There’s a reason why Afghanistan is vying with North Korea for the world’s worst country in terms of religious persecution.

The question nagging at some of us is what’s not getting covered in the daily drama of thousands of hapless people trying to leave the country despite the Taliban hordes gathered outside the airport. Also, sadly, there are the Marines inside the perimeter who are likewise keeping many people from getting on planes. (The Wall Street Journal has been covering the latter situation better than anyone else).

And on Wednesday, Catholic News Service reported that people who qualify for refugee status, including Christians, are being barred by the State Department from boarding outgoing military flights. Soo, who’s coming to the rescue? Political commentator Glenn Beck, that’s who. CNA says he’s raised $28 million via his Nazarene Fund to fly 20 jets into Kabul and pick up stranded Christians. This is an amazing story but where is the mainstream coverage?

While my co-writer Clemente Lisi covered the Catholics marooned in this desperate place, I’ve been focusing on coverage of evangelical Protestants, the only other religious group of any size that’s trapped there. (There were Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan as well, but they read the tea leaves after terrorists killed 25 Sikhs in March of 2020. After last year’s attack, those who could leave the country, left.)

Recently, India offered to take the estimated 650 Sikhs and Hindus who remain, a move that’s gotten criticism by Indian Muslims who want to get some of their friends out as well, according to the New York Times.

But, right now, there are no government or sympathetic Vatican officials out there willing to fish out the surprising number of evangelical Protestants who have somehow cropped up in this forbidding terrain. We read news accounts of “missionaries” who are stranded in country and I want to know: What missionaries? What converts? Does anyone have facts?

It’s nearly impossible to get reputable statistics at this point and all the news I found was anecdotal and scattered.


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Thinking about the practical impact of shaming messages aimed at vaccine-resistant believers

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Thinking about the practical impact of shaming messages aimed at vaccine-resistant believers

During my decades in religion-beat work, I have heard many an evangelical leader make the following sardonic observation.

Wait, I’ve also heard traditional Catholics offer variations on this theme. And there may be partisan political versions of this, as well. But that’s not my turf.

OK, here is the message: The quickest way for an evangelical to receive glowing elite press coverage and commentary (add social-media praise, after about 2000+) is to attack other evangelicals.

Now, that is not what this think piece is about. I say that, even though some vaccine-resistant religious leaders may have thought that’s what Daniel Darling, senior vice president for Communications at the NRB (think National Religious Broadcasters) was doing in his recent USA Today op-ed entitled, “Why, as a Christian and an American, I got the COVID vaccine.”

But careful readers could see that his message was way more complicated than that. If you weren’t sure about his intent, check out the lengthy interview with Darling that followed on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program (click here or see the YouTube at the top of the full copy of this post). The veteran evangelical leader — former head of communications for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission — was clearly sending two messages.

Yes, one was to religious leaders who have doubts about the COVID-19 vaccines. But he also had sobering words for their critics, whose attacks have caused anger and conflict, instead of changing minds.

Thus, what we have here is a piece of op-ed work, and the MSNBC appearance that followed, that people on both sides of this warfare need to parse carefully. This includes journalists who are covering this story — which is so not over yet.


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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

Want to be smart?

Then avoid simple narratives in news coverage. That’s especially true on the still-timely subject of religion and debates about the COVID-19 vaccines.

For evidence, check out these recent stories:

• “As vaccine mandates become a reality, politicians, pastors and even the pope are speaking out against faith-based exemptions,” the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas reports.

But here’s the twist: “In many cases, those who claim a religious exemption are part of a denomination that doesn’t share their concerns, although many faith leaders do support making exemptions available.”

• “Does respect for human life mean vaccine mandates?” asks a story by the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein.

The answer? It’s complicated.

“In recent days, with a handful of organizations from Facebook and Google to the University of Virginia announcing vaccine mandates, religious leaders and organizations have considered their own teachings and values on the question of how to show respect for life,” Boorstein writes. “And their conclusions vary widely.”

• This news, via USA Today, jumps out at you: “Florida church vaccinates hundreds after 6 members die from COVID-19 in 10 days.”

"It's just been ripping our hearts apart,” the senior pastor says in the story by Marina Pitofsky.

It’s probably no surprise that social media pounced on the church for waiting until members died to promote vaccinations.

Except, as anyone reading the entire report learns, it didn’t: “The church vaccinated about 800 people in March at a similar event as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the U.S.”

While not religion related per se, Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column this week makes some excellent points.


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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Why did some journalists bury the faith tie that binds them?

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Why did some journalists bury the faith tie that binds them?

If it’s been said once it’s been said a thousand times: Jimmy Carter may have been a very unsuccessful U.S. president, but his life after the White House has been top-notch.

In fact, according to a 2015 poll, the American public thinks he’s No. 1 among the nation’s post-presidents.

Obviously, there was that Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, which was awarded for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." But if you ask average Americans what they admire about Carter’s life post-White House, I think most of them would mention two, or maybe three, parts of his life.

First, there is his record in volunteer work and public service, symbolized by decades of work with Habitat For Humanity building homes for the working poor. If you have followed that story at all, you know that Carter doesn’t just show up with a hammer for the photo-ops. Second, there is the remarkable marriage-partnership between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. I have heard Southerners refer to them as the “anti-Clintons,” as in Bill and Hillary Rodham.

Finally, there is — as Jerry Falwell, Jr., of all people, once put it — Carter’s many decades of work as the “world’s most famous Sunday school teacher.” Ths smiling Baptist did that work week after week whether there were TV cameras present or not.

That faith element was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) in which host Todd Wilken and I looked at three mainstream-press features about Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary. If readers are interested in the faith tie that binds in this marriage, they should start with this fine Washington Post feature, with it’s one-word headline: “Inseparable.” Here’s the overture:

PLAINS, Ga. — When they arrived, they strolled hand-in-hand toward their pond with a graceful willow at its edge.

“We’re going to be buried right there, on that little hill,” Jimmy Carter said, motioning toward the lawn sloping up from the pond.


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