Thursday, April 24, 2025

Newsweek

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Give the charismatic world's 'new prophets' more ink? Julia Duin still says 'yes' (updated)

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Give the charismatic world's 'new prophets' more ink? Julia Duin still says 'yes' (updated)

Surely you’ve heard of the “new prophets” in the rowdy world of charismatic Christianity?

In terms of hooks for news, these folks have everything.

We’re talking about lots of energy and egos, with the kind of on-camera talent that produces megachurches and social-media outbursts that go viral. There are also plenty of links to the powers that be around Donald Trump. This is “charisma” in every sense of that word.

Julia Duin has been sounding this horn here at GetReligion for years, long before the events surrounding January 6th caught the attention of Big Media. Here is a chunk of a 2018 post: “Religion News Service — Movie claims 'red tsunami' will vindicate Donald Trump in November.”

… (S)ecular America doesn’t get how vehemently many people believe that God orchestrated President Trump’s 2016 victory. And what’s more, many of those people believe God has mandated another victory for Trump in 2020.

You’ve not heard this? Folks, you’re not reading the right websites. …

It’s not so much evangelical Protestants who are pushing this idea, but a daughter movement made up of charismatics and Pentecostals (linked up with Liberty University film people). I’ve been amazed over the years how few religion reporters follow these folks, even though this demographic was instrumental in getting Trump elected. Plus, a growing percentage of world Christianity is Pentecostal/charismatic (see this classic major Pew Forum study). Visit Brazil, if you don’t believe me. And much of Africa.

You want more? How about this piece early in 2020: “About Todd Bentley and 2020 prophecies: How are reporters supposed to cover this stuff?”

Julia was back with more information and news hooks linked to the this new generation of self-proclaimed prophets (and the people who warned about getting tied up in politics) months later with this piece: “Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?”

Everyone remembers that viral “strike and strike and strike” rap from the Rev. Paula White-Cain.


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That New Yorker #FreeBritany feature: It's all about a Baptist daddy and his wild daughter?

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That New Yorker #FreeBritany feature: It's all about a Baptist daddy and his wild daughter?

One thing is clear, when you read the long, sad (but buzz-worthy) feature in The New Yorker entitled “Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare.”

Britney is a celebrity.

When she goes to court, she is a celebrity. When she escapes to a pub, she is a celebrity. When she fights to see her children, she is a celebrity. When she has a nervous breakdown (especially in public), she is a celebrity.

If and when she ever returns to church (there are rumors), she will do so as a celebrity. Ditto for any return to celebrity friendly Kabbalah classes.

But you get what you expect in this feature, written by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino. There’s a huge cast of characters, some who speak on the record and some who do not. There are waves of details from court documents and testimony. There’s an endless survey of public scenes and paparazzi chases.

But the second line of the double-decker headline points to the heart of the story: “How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life — and have held on to it for thirteen years.”

This is a story about a fight between a Baptist father (simply “Jamie” in most of the story) and his wild daughter — who has lived her entire teen and adult life in the glare of a media spotlight that burned her, even as it poured wealth on everyone around her, including members of her immediate family.

What about faith issues? There are fleeting glimpses of religion “ghosts” throughout this story. However, there is evidence that The New Yorker team realizes that, behind all of the talk about Britney’s mental health, the father and daughter are fighting about the moral choices she has made in her private life. Meanwhile, the daughter keeps trying to break free from this noose, in part through sex, love, marriage and children.

Consider the implications of this passage, referring to the legal drama that pulled the #FreeBritney social-media world back into the headlines:


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Demographics make news: How will religion shape the oncoming Birth Dearth and vice versa?

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Demographics make news: How will religion shape the oncoming Birth Dearth and vice versa?

A Newsweek magazine feature back in 1975 was headlined "The Cooling World." (Journalists beware: The supposed 1977 Time magazine cover story "How to Survive the Coming Ice Age" is among the countless frauds that infest the Internet.)

Eventually, cultural concern shifted instead to "global warming" (which was then rebranded as "climate change").

Seven years before Newsweek's freeze alarm, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published his apocalyptic "The Population Bomb," which sold in the millions and updated Thomas Malthus's dire demographic predictions from 1798. Ehrlich warned, for example, that due to global overpopulation, in the 1970s "hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." He then helped found the Zero Population Growth organization (since rechristened Population Connection).

Now comes The New York Times with a major page-one May 23 feature headlined "Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications." We're told fertility rates are falling most everywhere except Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and that experts project the first population decline in world history will take hold by the end of this century. Click here for tmatt’s podcast and first take on some of the religion hooks in that story.

Stagnant and shrinking populations will thrill a segment of environmentalists, but these trends also destabilize society — which creates news. Whether with the shared responsibilities families have always assumed, or modern-day governments' social security systems, humanity must have enough younger workers carrying older people to sustain itself.

To keep the population stable, a society needs 2.1 children in the average nuclear family. A survey in The Lancet last year predicted that 183 of the world's 195 nations and territories are on a path to fall below that mark.

The particulars are staggering. The United States is well below that replacement number, and India and Mexico are nearly there, but South Korea has plummeted to a remarkable 0.92.


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Despite China's vast religious and political repression, 2022 Olympic boycott still unlikely

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Despite China's vast religious and political repression, 2022 Olympic boycott still unlikely

We’re rapidly approaching the inflection point on whether China will get to stage the 2022 Winter Olympics without some sort of concurrent international protest — such as a major boycott — prompted by Beijing’s often outrageous treatment of its Muslim Uighur, Tibetan Buddhist and underground Christian religious minorities, as well as its secular pro-democracy movement.

The question for me is: Will the international community — and in particular the United States and other democracy-espousing nations — punk out as it did with the Nazi-run 1936 Berlin Olympics. Or will the International community find some righteous backbone and either boycott the 2022 winter games, or make its opposition to Beijing’s policies known in another significant and unmistakable manner?

China, of course, has threatened retaliation against any nation that dares to challenge it by linking the Olympics and human rights.

When I last posted about the possibility of an international boycott of the upcoming China Games, — back in 2019 — I wrote off any boycott possibility as an extreme long shot.

As of this writing, I think a widespread boycott is still highly unlikely. But it’s no longer a completely dismissible long shot, I believe, because of changed circumstances — not the least of which is the ongoing coronavirus crisis and China’s oblique explanations of the pandemic’s Wuhan region origins.

Why still unlikely? Ironically, for the very same reason a protest is now slightly more conceivable, the coronavirus.

The U.S., without which no boycott can succeed, as well as its major pro-Western democratic allies, are all still deeply engaged in trying to halt the coronavirus.

We don’t know how much longer this fight will go on or what surprises are ahead. Regardless, the effort has left them economically vulnerable and politically drained. I’d say they lack the necessary additional emotional and intellectual bandwidth to take on another international crisis. Certainly not one they can avoid without triggering immediate dire consequences for their own citizens.

Forget the morality of the situation. Moral avoidance is a well-honed government strategy with a global heritage.


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Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?

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On Saturday night, while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were acknowledging the cheers of a nation, a spiritual battle was going on in Apopka, Fla.

The crowd gathered at Paula White-Cain’s City of Destiny Church was clearly dispirited at the events of the day; a day that various segments of the Pentecostal/charismatic world had declared would never happen because God would make sure that His chosen instrument, President Donald Trump, would get a second term.

“Keep on believing,” White told the crowd. “There are processes at work. …Don’t get distracted by the voices of the media. Prayer brings the will of God to pass. This is a day of rejoicing. Whenever God is moving, it’s a day of rejoicing.

“We break every spirit of mockery right now. What matters is not what man says, but what God says.”

It was her fourth day of prayer meetings since Election Day to “decree” Trump’s coming victory. At one point, her son, Bradley Knight, said he will quit the ministry if Trump is not elected.

White, as many of you know, is Trump’s highest profile pastor, so we’re not talking about a minor personality here. She is arguably America’s most powerful female religious figure. She is — acting as the spiritual force behind Trump — a key figure who is refusing to concede the election to Biden.

In social media, people are talking about this like crazy. In the news?

Her first stab at praying Trump into a second term got treated as a joke by media who hadn’t a clue of what she was trying to do. They did listen to her words, which is why she’s quoted as accusing demons of rigging the election.

Yep, she did say that.

It all started when RightWingWatch posted a video of White shouting “the Lord says it is done” on Nov. 5 about Trump’s reelection. A sample of her prayers, which read like battle orders asking God to take down Biden votes, are as follows. She prayed that:

“… every demonic confederacy against the election…against who You have declared to be in the White House … we come against people working in high levels right now.

Let your hand establish the outcome of this income … for I hear the sound of victory, I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory.


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New podcast: Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?

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The question for the week appears to be: Are you now, or have you ever been, a charismatic Catholic?

In a land in which citizens are divided just as much by entertainment as they are by their religious and political choices, that question leads directly to cable television and a certain blue-zip-code hit focusing on, to quote IMDB, this story hook: “Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.”

This leads us to the word “handmaid” and strained efforts by some — repeat “some” — journalists to attach it to the life and faith of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. This topic was, of course, discussed at length during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). How could we avoid it?

It’s crucial to know that the word “handmaid” has radically different meanings for members of two radically different flocks of Americans.

For Catholics and other traditional Christians, this term is defined by its use in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, during this encounter between Mary and the Angel Gabriel. This is long, but essential:

… The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. …For with God nothing shall be impossible.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

In this context, the word refers to a “female servant.” However, its use in Christian tradition has, for 2,000 years, been linked directly to St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Now, let’s move to mass media, where the Urban Dictionary defines the term as:


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Newsweek: Core doctrine of Christianity is something 'evangelists' may or may not believe

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In recent years, your GetReligionistas have had quite a few discussions of the following question: Should today’s Newsweek continue to be treated as the important newsmagazine that it once was?

Hear me out. I know that Newsweek contains some interesting and provocative commentary pieces and, every now and then, the magazine publishes an interesting essay on a news topic that appears to have been written by someone in the newsroom.

The day-by-day norm, however, appears to consist of quick-hit pieces based on the work of others, often showing signs of work by inexperienced interns. Some of these online pieces can be considered “aggregation” pointing readers to other sources of news and information.

Please don’t read that as an automatic put-down. GetReligion publishes its share of “think pieces” that introduce readers to articles we have seen linked to religion news. The goal is to write a worthy intro and then show readers bites of the article — clearly identifying the source — that lets them see key insights or information. At the end, we encourage folks to “read it all,” with a URL to the source.

The problem, to be blunt, is when there is evidence that the journalists doing this work have little or no understanding of the material they are “writing about.” Consider this overture in a Newsweek piece with this headline: “52 Percent of Americans Say Jesus Isn't God but Was a Great Teacher, Survey Says.”

A slight majority of American adults say Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more during his lifetime, which several Christian leaders say is evidence today's faithful are "drifting away" from traditional evangelist teachings.

As earlier reported by The Christian Post, the 2020 survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries, a Florida-based Reform Church nonprofit, found 52 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Jesus Christ is not God — a belief that contradicts traditional teachings of the Bible through the Christian church, which state Jesus was both man and God.

Nearly one-third of evangelicals in the survey agreed that Jesus isn't God, compared to 65 percent who said "Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God."

Where to begin?


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New Testament texts were handed down across centuries, so are they reliable?

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THE QUESTION:

Can we rely upon New Testament texts that were copied and recopied over centuries?

THE GUY’S ANSWER:

It’s hard to think of any question more central for the Christian faith than that. The Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and subsequent catechism proclaim that the New Testament books provide “the ultimate truth of God’s revelation.” The church “unhesitatingly affirms” that they “faithfully hand on” the “honest truth about Jesus” and the history of his words and deeds.

Yet consider this. If people were to be asked what’s their favorite saying of Jesus Christ, many would certainly choose his words while being executed upon the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” Luke 23:34). Equally cherished is his admonition to the mob preparing to stone to death an adulterous woman: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7).

Careful Bible readers will note that most Bible versions on sale today, including those produced by conservative evangelicals, have footnotes stating in all candor that those two sayings are absent in early and widely recognized Gospel manuscripts in the original Greek language. That does not prove the sayings are not authentic but that it’s possible or likely they weren’t in the two Gospels as originally written.

The familiar King James (Protestant) and Douay-Rheims (Catholic) translations from centuries ago raise no such questions. But today’s Bibles note such findings from modern-day scholarship in the highly technical field of “textual criticism,” which seeks to get us as close to the original writings as possible. The fact we have around 5,300 surviving manuscripts and fragments, a few of them quite early (vastly more evidence than with other 1st Century writings), means experts must evaluate and choose from many variations.

This situation led to doubts about New Testament credibility from a respected textual critic, Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, in a scholarly work, “The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture” (1993).


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When it comes to John MacArthur, Beth Moore and Russell Moore, let's ask tougher questions.

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By now, many of you may have heard of the harsh comment that the Rev. John MacArthur, an extremely conservative evangelical pastor, made about Beth Moore, possibly the most famous woman in Southern Baptist life today.

MacArthur, who is very old school even among evangelicals, has led Grace Community Church north of Los Angeles for 50 years. To say he dislikes women preachers would be an understatement.

There are a lot of people out there protesting his unkind comments, including Relevant magazine, which produced an article listing several leaders across the theological spectrum critical of MacArthur.

MacArthur, by the way, has been even more scathing about charismatics over the years, so the Beth Moore crowd may be getting an idea of what the Pentecostal/charismatic crowd has been putting up with for a number of years.

First, according to Religion News Service, here’s what MacArthur said.

During the “Truth Matters Conference,” held Oct. 16-18 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where he is pastor, MacArthur and other panelists were asked to give their gut reactions to one- or two-word phrases.

Asked to respond to the phrase “Beth Moore,” the name of a well-known Southern Baptist Bible teacher, MacArthur replied, “Go home.”

Sounds of laughter and applause could be heard in response during a recording of the session, which was posted online.

MacArthur — a leading proponent of Reformed theology and of complementarianism, the idea that women and men have different roles to play in the church and in society — was apparently responding to a controversy this past summer when Moore noted on Twitter that she spoke at a megachurch on a Sunday morning.

Her tweet led to accusations that Moore was undermining Southern Baptist teaching, which bars women from holding the office of pastor in churches.

One voice that has been absent on this latest flare-up has been the Rev. Russell Moore (no relation to Beth) who is the head of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. The last interview with him that I saw occurred in August when Newsweek’s Nina Burleigh called him the “rebel evangelical.”

It was a very weak, even clueless, interview. The questions were vapid and Moore, who is no fool, slid past them with little difficulty. Most of the questions were about racism and sex abuse within the SBC, but they weren’t tough questions by any chance.

Meanwhile, is Russell Moore really a “rebel evangelical?” For that matter, so is Beth Moore? Are we talking about doctrine here or politics?


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