, , , , , , , ,

What's the role of religion as social trust unravels in American public life?

, , , , , , , ,
What's the role of religion as social trust unravels in American public life?

Time for a Religion Guy Memo that sidesteps the onrushing news of the moment for a broader-brush assessment of America and American religion that the media need to be thinking about.

Last Saturday, CNN host Michael Smerconish asked whether the United States is experiencing “a national nervous breakdown,” and conducted a (non-scientific) online poll in which 78% of 22,000-plus viewers answered “no” to this question: “Are concerns about America’s unraveling overblown?”

Devastating documentation on the situation came the morning after Independence Day from the Gallup Poll’s annual survey on the population’s confidence in the various institutions that lead, bind and shape the nation.

The Gallup organization stands out among pollsters for its data on identical or similar questions across many years. Writers who pursue this will want to examine the year-by-year “confidence in institutions” data, which in many cases date back to 1973.

Since this is GetReligion, we start with how much confidence this year’s 1,015 respondents have in “the church or organized religion.”

The following numbers combine the “a great deal” and “quite a lot” answers to yield a confidence index. (The poll’s other choices were “some,” “very little,” “none” and “no opinion.”) Note that these percentages track opinions among the general public, not just Americans who are personally involved or knowledgeable about religion.

Simply put, the populace’s confidence in organized religion has hit rock bottom in 2022 at 31%, compared with a 52% majority as recently as 2009, and consistent scores of 60% or better from 1973 through 1985. Digging into the internals we find 46% confidence among self-identified Republicans vs. a paltry 26% among Democrats.

What happened? The Guy sees no clear pattern of immediate reactions to, for instance, news eruptions regarding Catholic priestly predators or the abortion or the same-sex marriage disputes, though gradual accumulating impact seems likely. There’s possibly a bit of damage from a Christian faction’s visible conservative politicking, particularly in the Trump years, but even that is debatable.

The Guy proposes an explanation based upon all institutions gauged by the poll.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why are United Methodists at war? Readers need to know that sexuality isn't the only fault line

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Why are United Methodists at war? Readers need to know that sexuality isn't the only fault line

If you read most of the mainstream news coverage about chaos inside the United Methodist Church, then you know that this war centers on LGBTQ issues.

Readers who use niche websites offering the views of conservative United Methodists, in the United States and around the world, will learn that the war is about sex, salvation, biblical authority and core doctrines in ancient Christian creeds. Hold that thought.

Before we look at recent events in the divided United Methodist Church, let’s consider an important political-science term — “condensation symbol” — that journalists may want to ponder. In a 2021 post (“Queer Santa As A Condensed Symbol Of Progressivism”) — blogger Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher offered this material from a reader:

A condensation symbol is “a name, word, phrase, or maxim which stirs vivid impressions involving the listener’s most basic values and readies the listener for action,” as defined by political scientist Doris Graber. Short words or phrases such as “my country,” “old glory” “American Dream,” “family values,” are all condensation symbols because they conjure a specific image within the listener and carry “intense emotional and effective power.” … Graber identified three main characteristics of condensation symbols, as they: (1) Have the tendency to evoke rich and vivid images in an audience. (2) Possess the capacity to arouse emotions. (3) Supply instant categorizations and evaluations.

With that in mind, consider the ministry of Isaac Simmons — currently associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Ill. — who has been accepted as a candidate for UMC ordination. Simmons (they/them) is best known as the drag-queen preacher Penny Cost.

At first glance, it would appear that Penny Cost is a perfect example of the LGBTQ issues causing the UMC split. However, I would argue that Simmons is a “condensed symbol” of the wider concerns of the global United Methodist coalition that wants to retain and defend the denomination’s current doctrines on a host of issues.

Consider the following from The American Spectator piece with this headline: “Methodist Church’s First Drag Queen Pastor: ‘God Is Nothing’.” This is, of course, a conservative publication. However, the following passage focuses on direct quotes from a new slam poem posted online by Penny Cost:

“God is nothing,” the self-described “dragavangelist” repeats throughout the poem, adding, “the Bible is nothing” and “religion is nothing.” In the end, he concludes God and the Bible are nothing “unless we wield it into something.”

“God must be f***ing nothing,” he says, “if her boundaryless, transubstantiated bodies of color are run down, beaten, and strewn in the streets of America instead of ruling the runways of life.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Abstinence may be 'in' again, but don't expect big-time media to give it a fair hearing

, , , , , , , , , ,
Abstinence may be 'in' again, but don't expect big-time media to give it a fair hearing

Some three weeks have passed since the Supreme Court dumped Roe v. Wade and the torrent of angry pro-abortion-rights pieces fills the pages of nearly every news publication out there.

Outlets like the New Yorker, for instance, just keep pumping them out at a rate that you have to wonder when they turned into the public voice of Planned Parenthood. The editors are, of course, preaching to their choir of faithful readers.

I’ll also say that the anti-abortion folks have been totally unprepared for the never-ending waves of attacks and, yes, some of the lies that have followed the ruling. I’m seeing precious few of their opinions out there in the secular media. Maybe they’re being blocked; hard to tell.

The underlying assumption of the argument is the gospel of the Sexual Revolution — people have a right to sex whenever, however, wherever and with whomever. This right is a modern invention. Most societies attempted to chaperone their teens and encouraged their offspring married young. They also punished adultery quite severely. One’s ‘right’ to sex was hedged in enormously.

Today, the thought of limiting one’s desires is equal to an obscenity in our culture, which is why the antidote to abortion –- abstinence -– draws such howls of protest. How dare anyone tell us no? And so an Religion News Service led a story on abstinence with these paragraphs:

(RNS) — In front of a room of middle schoolers, a youth minister in rural North Carolina scribbles “hand-holding” and “kissing” on the bottom of a whiteboard. He then writes “intercourse” on the top of the board. Between the gap, he draws a thick line, indicating that sex before marriage — anything more than kissing, actually — crosses a literal line of purity.

It’s a scene the Rev. Amelia Fulbright, now the transitional pastor of the Congregational Church of Austin, recalls from her childhood, when she attended a ministry-led sex-ed course.

The reporter chose someone from a liberal denomination, or responded to a a PR message from that church, to arrive at this inevitable conclusion.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pew gap in blue America? David French and Ryan Burge offer much to think about

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Pew gap in blue America? David French and Ryan Burge offer much to think about

If you have followed GetReligion over the past decade or two then you have probably spotted some common themes linked to ongoing news trends (and I’m not talking about the musings of one Bill “Kellerism” Keller).

Here is a quick refresher with a few big ones:

* The press tends to ignore the RELIGION side of liberal faith groups, focusing only on their political stands.

* One of the biggest news stories of the late 20th century was the demographic implosion of Mainline Protestantism, leaving a public-square void filled, for the most part, by evangelicals.

* The rise of nondenominational evangelicals, with zero ties to existing evangelical power structures, has really confused lots of political reporters.

* It’s hard to do accurate, balanced, fair-minded journalism in an age when the technology pushes people into concrete media silos full of true believers. Preaching to the choir, alas, is good for business (but not for America).

* Newsroom managers need to hire experienced, trained religion-beat pros. That helps prevent lots of tone-deaf mistakes.

Here is one more. The political “pew gap” is real. Citizens who are committed members of traditional faiths tend to have radically different beliefs than those who are not. All together now: “Blue Movie.”

This brings me to a rare business-week “think piece” built on a remarkable David French piece at The Dispatch that will be helpful to journalists who are — to name one trend GetReligion jumped on in 2016 — trying to make sense of the changing choices of Latino (as opposed to Latinx) voters. After watching the chatter on Twitter, I have added two relevant tweet-charts from Ryan Burge, a helpful scholar who cooperates with GetReligion. That French headline:

The God Gap Helps Explain a 'Seismic Shift' in American Politics

The most important religious divide isn't between right and left, but between left and left

The Big Idea: A funny thing happened on the way to that Democratic dream of dominating the future with a multiethnic coalition fighting a lily-white GOP.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Plug-In: NASA's amazing space images, fighting in Ukraine and the top religion stories

, , , ,
Plug-In: NASA's amazing space images, fighting in Ukraine and the top religion stories

“Monsters are everywhere in the Bible — and some are even human.”

These are some of the religion headlines that caught my attention this past week.

To be honest, though, I haven’t paid as close attention to the news as I normally do.

As I previewed in the last Weekend Plug-in three weeks ago, I took off a week for vacation (I had a wonderful time seeing country shows with my sister and parents in Branson, Mo.). Then I took off a week for a reporting trip to the Chicago area.

But in the Windy City, I came down with what at first I thought were allergies. Eventually, I tested positive for COVID-19. The experience threw me for a loop. I finally tested negative Friday night. I’m feeling much better.

However, I have no doubt I’ve missed a whole lot of the best reads in the world of faith. Feel free to catch me up!

One thing I didn’t miss: those amazing first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Think there might be a religion angle there? Enter the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner with this fascinating take:

The images raise issues for followers of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and affirm the thoughts of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in the 1700s imagined the possibility of galaxies beyond our own, says Harvard government professor Michael Rosen.

Religion News Service’s Claire Giangravé quotes Vatican astrophysicist Brother Guy Consolmagno:

“The science behind this telescope is our attempt to use our God-given intelligence to understand the logic of the universe,” Consolmagno wrote, adding that “the universe wouldn’t work if it weren’t logical.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Pride meets Father's Day: Gay dads preach the 'radical inclusivity' of their Chicago parish

, , , , , , , , , ,
Pride meets Father's Day: Gay dads preach the 'radical inclusivity' of their Chicago parish

Landon Duyka and Alex Shingleton had almost given up on Catholicism.

Then they found Old St. Patrick's Church in Chicago, where their family was welcomed because the parish practices what its clergy call "radical inclusivity." This year, the two husbands created an online buzz when, after a decade in these pews, they shared the pulpit during a symbolic Sunday Mass.

“Chicago is celebrating Pride and, of course, today is Father's Day and, conveniently, we tick both of those boxes," said Duyka. "In all honesty, if you had told us as young boys who wasted countless hours of our lives in church trying to 'pray the gay away' that we someday would be standing in front of all of you in our Catholic church talking about our family on Father's Day, we would never have believed you."

At this historic parish, their adopted daughters are thriving. The youngest was baptized with no complications, unlike the "secret ceremony" for their first daughter at a previous church. In 2016, the Old St. Pat's altar featured -- for a month -- photos of victims from Orlando's Pulse nightclub massacre. Parishioners shook their hands during the Sign of the Peace. There was no need to worry about sermons opposing gay marriage or seeing conversion-therapy pamphlets.

The Father's Day "reflection" by Duyka and Singleton filled the homily slot in the Mass, following the Gospel reading. There was no homily, even though Canon law requires a "priest of deacon" to deliver one during Sunday Masses with a congregation.

The details of this Pride-season Mass inspired online debates since it occurred in the powerful Archdiocese of Chicago, led by Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Pope Francis recently named Cupich to the Vatican's Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The Chicago cardinal has been a fierce defender of the pope's Traditionis Custodes ("Guardians of the Tradition") document limiting use of the Tridentine Latin Mass. With its authority, Cupich has also restricted other worship traditions favored by Catholic conservatives, such as priests celebrating Mass "ad orientem," as opposed to the modern "versus populum" stance in which, when at the altar, they face their congregations.

On LGBTQ issues, Cupich made news with his response to a 2021 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith text forbidding blessings for same-sex couples.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking about Internet-age ethics with J.D. Flynn, especially rumors about dead popes

, , , , , , , , , ,
Thinking about Internet-age ethics with J.D. Flynn, especially rumors about dead popes

Everyone was talking about this story last week: Pope Benedict XVI is (a) dead, (b) not dead or (c) come on, what’s up with this tired Internet game again?

In that final category, I offer you the following mini-think piece from J.D. Flynn of The Pillar, that must-bookmark source of Catholic news, commentary and Canon law-specifics.

This whole circus was a classic example of people being tempted to report, as semi-news, the fact that online people were TALKING ABOUT something that was being reported with zero creditable attribution. Thus, Flynn starts with this basic equation:

… Pope emeritus Benedict XVI is still not dead. …

Why is that news?

Because last night an Italian schoolteacher named Tommaso De Benedetti created a moral panic online, with a hoax that seems to have been in the works for nearly a year.

“Moral” panic?

That’s an interesting choice of words. The key is that journalists had to stop and ponder whether they had the fortitude to not push the “RETWEET” button on a story that was essentially about Internet chatter.

Let’s keep walking through Flynn’s piece as he works his way through this:

Back in August 2021, the guy created a Twitter account for Bishop Georg Bätzing, who is president of the German bishops’ conference. The account managed to amass thousands of followers. He didn’t use the account, but he built that following by strategically following the right people, and allowing the Twitter algorithms to do the rest.

Then yesterday evening, he tweeted in German, English, and Spanish that Pope emeritus Benedict XVI had died.

The tweets took off like wildfire. Several media outlets picked them up, and a lot of producers and journalists retweeted them. My phone started blowing up — priests, bishops, and other journalists were all asking me if it was true.

What to do?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Experts call the Unification Church a 'cult,' and that word requires explanation

, , , , , , , , ,
Podcast: Experts call the Unification Church a 'cult,' and that word requires explanation

It has been a long time since I have done a podcast post about a developing news story only one day after I wrote the original post on that topic.

However, yesterday’s post — “New York Times report says the Unification Church is a 'church' and it's as simple as that” — turned out to have some old issues connected to it that, when discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” episode, took us back into a familiar journalism minefield. (To get to the actual podcast, JUST CLICK HERE.) Can you say “cult”?

Before we get to the old issue of journalists (and academics) struggling to define “cult,” let’s look at some of the ways and religious and political language are woven into the story of the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan — primarily through the family history of Tetsuya Yamagami, who was arrested after the shooting. This is from The Guardian:

Tetsuya Yamagami has confessed to killing the former Japanese prime minister during a campaign speech on Friday. He blamed the global religious movement — whose members are often referred to as Moonies — for bankrupting his family, and believed that Abe had championed its activities in Japan.

The Japan branch of the church has confirmed that Yamagami’s mother is a member, but declined to comment on the suspect’s claims that she had made a “huge donation” more than 20 years ago that left the family struggling financially.

The branch’s president, Tomihiro Tanaka, told a press conference that Yamagami’s mother became a follower in the late 1990s, adding that the family had suffered financial ruin around 2002.

As I mentioned in the first post, it’s normal to call the Unification Church a “church” on first reference, since that is it’s primary name — as opposed to the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The journalism issue here is how reporters describe this religious movement in follow-up references and how much material news reports include about the messianic claims of its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Let’s return to the Guardian report:

Moon, who died in 2012, said he had had a vision aged 15 in which he was told by Jesus to complete his unfulfilled mission to restore humanity to a state of “sinless” purity.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

New York Times report says the Unification Church is a 'church' and it's as simple as that

, , , , , ,
New York Times report says the Unification Church is a 'church' and it's as simple as that

I have received several texts and emails about a recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “Suspect in Abe Shooting Held a ‘Grudge.’ Scrutiny Falls on a Church.”

If you run a quick search for “church” in this report, you will find the term used 25 times. That’s quite a few uses of what appears to be, for the Times team, a word with no specific meaning.

Thus, we need to do that GetReligion thing that we do. Let’s look at some online dictionaries and see what the word “church” means. This Dictionary.com reference is typical and we need to see several of its secondary definitions:

church:

* a building for public Christian worship.

* public worship of God or a religious service in such a building: to attend church regularly.

* (sometimes initial capital letter) the whole body of Christian believers; Christendom.

* (sometimes initial capital letter) any division of this body professing the same creed and acknowledging the same ecclesiastical authority; a Christian denomination: the Methodist Church.

What’s the basic issue here? As one veteran journalist put it, in a text about this Times report: “I didn’t know the Unification Church was a Christian church.”

Once again we need to talk about how journalists use, or don’t use, tricky words such as “sect” or even “cult” — which may affect how news publications use a word like “church.” When dealing with the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and the work of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, we also need to pay attention to the word “messiah.”

The bottom line: Moon’s movement called itself a “church” and identified it’s leader as either (lines tend to blur) a messiah or “the” new messiah. The problem with the Times report is that readers are told that this is a “church” and that is that — no additional information is needed.


Please respect our Commenting Policy