GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Bible Belt

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Podcast: Now what, after SBC 'messengers' have waved their yellow voting cards?

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Podcast: Now what, after SBC 'messengers' have waved their yellow voting cards?

Here’s a warning to reporters who are preparing for future national meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention: Never call these folks “delegates.”

They are not delegates at some kind of political event. They are “messengers” from their local autonomous churches. You see, this isn’t some kind of cocktail-hour mainline Protestant denominational whatever, and many Baptists don’t like the word “denomination,” either. This is a “convention” and it only meets for three days each year.

Use the wrong language and Southern Baptists will give you a steely gaze and then say something nasty, like “Well, bless your heart.”

Quite a few journalists attended this year’s SBC meeting because there were headline-worthy — from their editors’ point of view — topics on the agenda, like clergy sexual abuse, Critical Race Theory and an election to determine if some new-breed conservative “pirates” (that was their term from 2021) were going to wrest the wheel of the ship away from the allegedly “woke” establishment conservatives.

As you would imagine, host Todd Wilken and I dug into all of this during the “Crossroads” podcast this week (CLICK HERE to tune that in). One of the big themes was that the hard-news coverage of this convention — especially by “Location, location, location” pros from major SBC centers, like Houston and Nashville — was top-notch.

Veteran GetReligion scribe Bobby “Positive” Ross, Jr., will offer pages of URLs in his Plug-In feature this week, so I will not try to do that (I’ll post a link when it goes public). But this is what happens when major newsrooms send religion-beat professionals to cover a major event. Readers don’t have to agree with every single thing that they saw in the #SBC2022 coverage, but what we had here was a tsunami of serious coverage from professionals, backed by the skilled Baptist Press team running the on-site newsroom.

With that in mind, let me note a Big Ideas from this podcast.

* If you study attendance numbers at previous “hot” SBC meetings, you will notice a logical trend linked to a map of the Bible Belt. In this online list, note the 1985 Dallas convention drew 45,519 messengers and the 1986 Atlanta convention drew 40,987.

Yes, these were the pivotal years in the historic “conservative resurgence” in SBC life. But, truth is, those numbers also reflect how far ordinary messengers can drive in one day jammed into the buses or vans owned by “ordinary” SBC congregations.


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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

It’s hard to imagine any corner of American life that has not been touched by the coronavirus pandemic.

Obviously, there have been plenty of religion stories — along with the obvious angles linked to politics, business and technology.

Then you have stories that combine all of these elements. That is, they combine all of these themes if reporters are willing to look at the numbers and trends through multiple lens. However, as any GetReligion reader knows, not all lens are created equal.

One of the most important stories has been the impact of COVID-19 realities on some of the most important zip codes — “important” from an elite-news perspective — on the blue coasts. That brings us to that massive headline the other day in The New York Times, a paper that has, for the most part, treated evidence of New York City woes as part of a vast a right-wing conspiracy theory. Here’s that double-decker headline:

Cities Lost Population in 2021, Leading to the Slowest Year of Growth in U.S. History

Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to grow, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This is, of course, an almost totally religion-free story. I was pleased to notice that the Times team took demographic issues — including birth-rate slumps — rather seriously, even if the editors didn’t (as usual) connect the dots and see the religious, cultural and moral elements of that important angle (please see this earlier GetReligion piece — “New York Times asks this faith-free question: Why are young Americans having fewer babies?” — for background).

Am I arguing that the flight from several important American super-cities is essentially a religion story? Of course not. Am I saying that issues linked to faith, family and culture are playing a role in this very, very important story? Yes, I am.


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Was this a story? Why? Mississippi governor talks about heaven and Southern anti-vax trends

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Was this a story? Why? Mississippi governor talks about heaven and Southern anti-vax trends

Here’s a complex question that is worthy of serious research by journalists: Are people who believe in heaven less likely to feel the need to get vaccinated against COVID-19?

Now, lots of people believe in eternal life and the vast majority of them believe — no matter what their level of faith or practice — that they are headed straight to heaven when they die. Belief in hell? That’s another matter.

Ah. But who, according to most media stereotypes, are the folks who REALLY believe in heaven? In particular, what kind of person would let that belief affect their actions in the real world (which means issues of political policy and public health)?

Obviously, we’re talking about those dang White evangelical Protestants. Right?

That brings us to a recent headline at The Daily Memphian (“the primary daily online publication for intelligent, in-depth journalism in the Memphis community”) that caught the eye of some GetReligion readers. The emails I received made it clear that some people were mad about this story for different reasons. Hold that thought.

First, the headline: “Miss. Gov.: South’s response to COVID impacted by belief in ‘eternal life’.” Then, here is the overture:

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves believes religion has a lot to do with the region’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a … fundraiser at the Eads home of Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Brent Taylor, Reeves spoke to several dozen Republicans.

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID … and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say,” Reeves said.

“When you believe in eternal life — when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things,” he said, but added: “Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions. And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that and we should all do that.


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What collapse of the Afghan gov't means for Christians and other religious minorities

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What collapse of the Afghan gov't means for Christians and other religious minorities

On Oct. 19, 2001, as I drove to a prayer breakfast in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, the radio crackled with news of U.S. special forces on the ground in Afghanistan.

This was not a particularly shocking development since air and missile strikes in retaliation for 9/11 had started 12 days earlier.

Then religion editor for The Oklahoman, I quoted the breakfast’s keynote speaker — Steve Largent, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member then serving in Congress — in the story I wrote.

“We have been sent a very important wake-up call," Largent said that Friday morning. "Let's not go back to sleep."

All of us — at that point — felt an urgency about the war in Afghanistan and the effort to destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

Nearly 20 years later, my attention had diverted elsewhere until Afghanistan burst back into the headlines — in a major way — this past week.

It’s impossible to keep up with all the rapid-fire developments, but these stories delve into compelling religion angles:

• Young Afghans speak out about rapidly changing life under the Taliban (by Meagan Clark, ReligionUnplugged)

• Refugee aid groups criticize Biden for stumbles in evacuating ‘desperate’ Afghans (by Emily McFarlan Miller and Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)

• Taliban begins targeting Christians while cementing control over desperate Afghans (by Mindy Belz, World)

• Afghan-American scholar agonizes over homeland, lashes out at Taliban, U.S. (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)

• Afghanistan’s Christians, small in number, have gone underground, expert says (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)


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This week's podcast: Are all those COVID-19 stories about rebel preachers fueled by bias?

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Veteran GetReligion readers will remember that I grew up as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid in Texas and then, as an undergraduate, did a double major in journalism and history at Baylor University, along with a master’s in church-state studies.

Why bring up my Baptist credentials, right now? Well, they’re relevant to the topic that “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s podcast. (Click here to tune that in.)

You see, I have been listening to Bible Belt folks argue about journalism for a long time. My parents backed my career choice, but trust me when I say that I can quote chapter and verse on why many people think that “Christian” and “journalist” are words that don’t go together.

The bottom line: If you ask why so many journalists struggle to do accurate, balanced coverage of religion you’ll hear lots of conservatives in pews (and pulpits) say: “Well, journalists hate religious people.”

That’s a straw-man argument and simplistic, to boot. I have seen, and heard about, some strong examples of prejudice against religious folks in newsrooms, but I have never thought that negative prejudice was the biggest problem that skews religion coverage. For starters, I’ve met some journalists who don’t care enough about religion to, well, hate it. There’s way more journalists who think that there’s good religion and then there’s bad religion and they are pretty sure which is which.

Anyway, I continue to hear from GetReligion readers who are mad about all those news stories on independent preachers who ignore coronavirus crisis “shelter in place” orders requiring them to avoid business-as-usual worship. Here’s a chunk of the GetReligion post that served as the hook for the podcast:

… (The) question looks like this: Why are the few pastors who reject “shelter in place” orders getting so much ink with their face-to-face worship services, while the vast majority of clergy who have moved their rites online — often for the first time — are getting little or no coverage? I have already written about this twice at GetReligion — look here and then here. …

Here is what people are feeling: How come some angry preacher deep in the Bible Belt is getting all this coverage and, well, online efforts by the still massive Southern Baptist Convention are ignored?


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Democrats (and political reporters) need to start asking different religion questions

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Democrats (and political reporters) need to start asking different religion questions

After Democrats voted in the Alabama primary in early March, researchers for CNN and other National Exit Pool newsrooms asked them several questions.

Reactions to the candidates were sorted by gender, race, LGBTQ identity, age, education level, political ideology and other factors. However, researchers didn't ask about religious faith and how often voters attended worship services. They didn't probe differences between evangelicals, Catholics, Mainline Protestants and "nones" – Americans who claim zero ties to organized religious groups.

"We don't know the answers to these kinds of questions because they are rarely being asked," said Michael Wear of Public Square Strategies. He is best known for his work as faith-outreach director for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign and as part of the president's White House staff.

"This isn't just about exit polls. It's hard for Democrats to do their planning, and to allocate resources during campaigns, without this kind of data. … We need cross-tabs in these polls so that we can compare differences between white evangelicals and black evangelicals, between Catholics who go to Mass all the time and those who don't and other groups as well."

Exit Pool researchers did ask about religion in South Carolina, the pivotal state in former Vice President Joe Biden's stunning surge. It was significant that Biden was backed by 56% of Democrats who attend religious services "once a week or more," while 15% of those same voters backed Sen. Bernie Sanders. Among those who "never" attend services, Sanders was the clear winner.

Similar religion gaps emerged in North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee. In news coverage, these trends were linked to Biden's support from African-Americans, including churchgoers – a huge voter bloc among Democrats.

That's important information, said Wear. But it would have helped to know how Catholics in South Carolina voted, as well as more about evangelical Protestants – black and white. It would have helped to know what issues mattered most to active members of various religious groups and how faith affected their choices.

It's possible that pollsters and journalists do not ask these questions, he said, because key "players in the Democratic Party leadership aren't asking the big questions about religion, either."


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Did Hobby Lobby letter really say God told company to keep stores open during virus crisis?

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It’s totally logical that many unbelievers (and thus some pros in newsrooms) have trouble understanding how religious believers talk about prayer.

This is especially true when it comes to evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants, who have their own lingo about spiritual matters that is easy for outsiders to mock. This can become a problem, for example, when an evangelical who is a political conservative becomes Secretary of the Interior and starts using insider language about creation and the end times.

This brings us to — no, not Chick-fil-A — coronavirus news linked to another evangelical powerhouse that the Twitter left loves to kick. That would be the wealthy (evangelicals might prefer the word “blessed”) folks at Hobby Lobby.

For years, I have told my students that business news is a chunk of the journalism marketplace that is relatively free of political and cultural bias. People who invest billions or millions of dollars like their news to be rather objective, in terms of accurate quotes and information.

This, apparently, does not apply to Business Insider editors making a good-faith effort to understand how evangelical Christians think and talk. That brings us to that story that roared through social media under this headline: “Hobby Lobby founder reportedly told employees a message from God informed his decision to leave stores open amid the coronavirus outbreak.” Here’s the overture:

Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain that is no stranger to controversy, is once again finding itself in hot water for allegedly citing a message from God in its decision to leave stores open amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Though more than 90 retailers in the US have temporarily shuttered in the past week in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Hobby Lobby has remained steadfast in staying open for business. … (D)igital strategist Kendall Brown tweeted a widely circulated photo of a note allegedly written by Hobby Lobby founder David Green, in which the openly conservative Christian businessman repeatedly mentions the power of God as part of his justification to leave stores open.

In the note to employees, Green reportedly wrote that the decision was informed by a message from God bestowed upon his wife Barbara Green, who he described as a "prayer warrior."


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Big news in 2020? Thinking about the religious left, Mayor Pete and black churchgoers

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Think of it as a kind of “small-t” end of the year tradition here at GetReligion.

Toward the end of the annual podcast addressing the Top 10 religion-news events of the year — this year it’s “Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)” — host Todd Wilken always asks me the same question, one built on the assumption that journalists have some ability to see into the future. In other words, he asks something like, “What do you think will be the big religion stories of 2020?”

Like I said in the podcast post last week, news consumers can almost always count on the following:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God. …

You can’t go wrong with that list — especially with all of the ink being spilled, again, over Citizen Donald Trump and the great big monolithic “evangelical” vote.

However, there’s another political story that has, in the past three decades, become almost as predictable. It is, of course, the fill-in-the-blanks political feature about the rise (again) of the religious left (lower-case status) in the Democratic Party to do combat with the Religious Right (upper-case status).

These days, there is a bigger story that looms in the background of that old standard. Think of it as the Democrats trying to make peace with the religious middle in the age of the growing coalition of atheists, agnostics and the “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated). This coalition is now the most powerful religion-related power bloc in that party. The big question: How will this coalition, which includes the least religious congregation of Americans, get along with another crucial grassroots group — African-American churchgoers, who are among the most religious people in our culture.

That brings us to this weekend’s think piece, care of advocacy journalism team at The Daily Beast, that ran with this headline: “Mayor Pete Turns to God to Win Over Black Supporters.”


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Gov. Edwards wins again in Louisiana, for some vague reason (And Trump? 'Bless his heart')

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There was a joyful moment the other night — as in special election night — for people who oppose both Donald Trump and the current leadership of the woke Democratic Party.

I am referring to the victory of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who survived a hard push by Trump to defeat him. Democrats rarely get elected as governors in Southern states these days.

The question, of course, is this: How did Edwards do it? What made him electable in the current political atmosphere? I would have thought it was important to answer that question in the overture of the following Washington Post report:

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was elected to a second term … , overcoming opposition from President Trump and an increasingly polarized state electorate to hand Democrats their second major victory in a governor’s race over the past two weeks.

Edwards, 53, was running against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, 70, in a runoff election after neither candidate won an outright majority of votes last month. …

“How sweet it is,” Edwards told a crowd of cheering supporters at a victory rally late Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel in Baton Rouge.

Edwards said he had spoken with Rispone earlier in the evening. “We both agreed that the time for campaigning is over,” he said, “and now our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us.”

“And as for the president, God bless his heart,” Edwards added mockingly.

A few paragraphs later, readers learn that Edwards was a “relatively conservative Democrat” who “worked to prove his party could still lead a state that has continued to drift to the right in the Trump era.”

So other than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump, what was going on in this story? What made issues helped make Edwards a winner in a state that Trump won in a landslide?

Way, way down in the story, there was this meaty chunk of information in which the Post finally stated a crucial point — Edwards is a pro-life Democrat who is relatively progressive on economic issues and a conservative on matters of culture. In other words, he is an old-school Southern Democrat.


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