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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

When the dust has (thankfully) settled following Election Day, writers on politics, and on religion, and on religion-and-politics, will be analyzing what it all means for the future direction of U.S. culture.

Some matters on the agenda:

* Are the results a fluke, or a trend? What do they signal about 2024? Is the “religious right” a growing or receding force? How will the expected Trump 2024 campaign affect evangelicalism? What will Trumpism be post-Trump? Did the abortion issue hurt Republicans? Did religious liberty issues hurt Democrats? How do moral concerns shape inflation? Immigration? Crime? Ukraine?

* Then factions. What’s going on with the pivotal white Catholics? And Hispanic Catholics? Can Republicans ever make inroads among Black Protestants? Did religiously interesting new figures emerge among the Republicans’ record number of minority candidates?

* Here is a growing niche that should get its own sidebar: How crucial are non-religious voters for Democrats’ prospects?

* Oh, and how should journalists define “Christian nationalism” and how influential is that crowd anyway?

* And whatever else develops.

Specialists will be familiar with ReligionLink, a valuable service of the Religion News Association that, among other features, posts periodic memos on a specific topic in the news, providing detailed background, links to articles and proposed sources. Subscribe for free here.

Its October 18 posting laid out he midterm elections, listing no less than 76 background items from varied media and 25 expert sources. This material will remain just as useful for those post-election analyses next week and beyond.


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Baptist life in Texas: Where did all of those Southwestern Baptist Seminary students go?

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Baptist life in Texas: Where did all of those Southwestern Baptist Seminary students go?

I have no idea who said the following quote. But, somewhere in my young Texas Baptist life, I heard someone say: “Texas is the wallet on which the Southern Baptist Convention sits.”

OK, I cleaned up the grammar on that. It was probably: “Texas is the wallet Southern Baptists sit on.”

But the big idea was that there were so many Baptists in the Lone Star state — and so many different KINDS of Southern Baptists — that nothing could happen in the national SBC without taking into account the financial and statistical clout of Texas. Baptist diversity? Once upon a time, more than a few Texas Baptist preachers were basically Universalists with better preaching skills.

Thus, it’s important that, for the past quarter century or so, there have been TWO competing Southern Baptist conventions in the state — the conservative Southern Baptists of Texas and the old-guard Baptist General Convention of Texas. My father worked for the BGCT when I was in elementary school.

I can remember the old days when the state’s ink-on-paper Baptist Standard newspaper had legions of out-of-state subscribers, because many pastors wanted to scan the announcement pages to see when there were open jobs in Texas pulpits. Most of those readers were, logically enough, graduates of the then-massive Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This brings me to a much-discussed headline in the Nashville Tennessean: “Why a prominent Southern Baptist seminary is on the verge of 'crisis' after leadership upheaval.” This is a calm, factual story that, well, shows admirable restraint when it comes to some hot-button issues causing SBC tensions. These two names are missing, for example — Donald Trump and retired Judge Paul Pressler. But there is also a rather important hole linked to the Texas Baptist clout I mentioned earlier. Hold that thought.

First, here is the overture:

A prominent Southern Baptist seminary is taking corrective action as it reels from a cascade of financial mismanagement and reputational hits spanning several presidential administrations.


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U.S. bishops preach pro-life Catholic doctrine to Biden: Isn't that a story during midterms?

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U.S. bishops preach pro-life Catholic doctrine to Biden: Isn't that a story during midterms?

The looming midterm elections have the Republicans giddy over the potential that they may take control of the House and Senate. Democrats, on the other hand, are hoping to stem the loses knowing that they still have President Joe Biden in the White House.

Amid all this midterm mania are the talking points politicians are pushing in order to appeal to their core voters. Republicans are campaigning on inflation and crime and Democrats on diversity and, of course, abortion following the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Polls show that voters care more about inflation, but Democrats are hoping that talking up abortion will get out their base. Abortion, however, isn’t just a political issue. As Biden, a practicing Catholic, promises to make abortion a federal right by codifying Roe v. Wade into law should Democrats keep a majority, tension among him and several prominent U.S. bishops has heated up once again.

Some of these bishops have been in the news in the past regarding Biden’s support of abortion, threatening to deny him the sacrament of Holy Communion. It was last week that the issue came to the forefront again.

At least, it come to the forefront in Catholic news publications. In the elite press that GetReligion studies? Not so much or not at all.

This is how Catholic News Agency reported it on Oct. 25:

President Joe Biden, a professed Catholic, must end his “single-minded” abortion extremism and see the humanity in unborn children, the U.S. bishops have said. They said abortion’s impact is “tragic” and urged the president to support mothers.

“The president is gravely wrong to continue to seek every possible avenue to facilitate abortion, instead of using his power to increase support and care to mothers in challenging situations,” Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said Oct. 25.

“This single-minded extremism must end, and we implore President Biden to recognize the humanity in preborn children and the genuine life-giving care needed by women in this country,” he said.

The U.S. bishops’ statement noted that last week Biden declared that his top legislative priority after the November elections is to codify a national right to abortion.

This is a major story that was covered by the Catholic press, but big secular newsrooms ignored it.


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Is Hollywood afraid to be 'woke'? That's a question with moral and religious implications

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Is Hollywood afraid to be 'woke'? That's a question with moral and religious implications

It’s one of the most famous quotes ever about the realities of working in Hollywood. That quote: “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.”

Of course, the Tinseltown giant who said that was Frank “It’s a Wonderful Life” Capra, a hero of ordinary people in the heartland. So what would he know about working with the woke powers that be on the left coast, these days?

I bring this up because of a fascinating New York Times lament that ran the other day with this headline: “After #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear Hollywood Is Regressing.” Apparently, progressives in Hollywood are very, very upset with the American people — think heartland folks, again — about some nasty recent returns in ratings and at the box office. Some “message” flicks are bombing.

Here’s the thesis statement: “The takeaway, at least to some agents and studio executives: We tried — these ‘woke’ projects don’t work.”

What does religion have to do with this? Very little, according to the Times (but we will get to that).

It’s clear that, to the team that produced this Times sermon, Middle America simply does not share the concerns of woke artists about systematic racism, sexual abuse and the whole diversity project in general.

Now, you can forget that “Black Panther” juggernaut in multiplexes nationwide, including red zip codes. Stunning, well-crafted Black superhero tales don’t count. Americans just aren’t lining up to watch the morality tales that Hollywood wants them to embrace. But what’s interesting — at least to me — is the degree to which the movies and big-ticket streamed TV series at the heart of this debate often contain content about religious and moral issues that, yes, are LINKED to diversity issues.

In other words, is this a new news story or the latest chapter in an old story about Hollywood’s struggles to understand the more religious and culturally conservative half of the American marketplace?

Let’s start where the Times has chosen to start — with Hollywood’s efforts to clean up its act in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, etc. Here’s the thesis about the #MeToo aftermath:

The movement led to increased diversity and representation in the entertainment industry, but now there is worry that executives have turned their attention elsewhere.

What happened?


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Life in a disenchanted world: Once upon a time, Christians used to write fairy stories

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Life in a disenchanted world: Once upon a time, Christians used to write fairy stories

Demons appear on movie screens all the time, but poet Richard Rohlin is convinced he has actually seen them at work when counseling young people whose search for meaning has driven them deep into experiments with sex, drugs and the occult.

"The stories that I can't tell would curl your toenails," he said, speaking at the Eighth Day Institute in Wichita, Kansas. "If you think that these spiritual realities are not still with us, you are deluding yourself. ... The magic is coming back into the world. Something is happening and it is not an unqualified good."

The young people he works with in Dallas are not interested in sermons and detailed descriptions of why their lives are broken. But they are open to fantasies, myths and tales -- ancient and modern -- about unseen, spiritual realities that interact with their lives.

Millions of Americans know where to find stories about angels, demons, warriors, seers, giants, demigods and heroic kings and queens. They head straight to movie theaters and cable television, where they find entire universes of content offering visions of fantastic worlds. The last place they would seek inspiration of this kind is in churches.

The irony is that some of these works draw inspiration from the fantasy classics celebrated in the ecumenical Eighth Day Institute's annual fall celebration of The Inklings, a mid-20th Century circle of Christian writers in Oxford, England, that included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others.

This year's lectures focused on Scottish writer George MacDonald, often called the "grandfather of the Inklings," who is best known for "Phantastes," "The Golden Key," "Lilith" and many other works. The festival included Celtic and folk musicians, along with workshops on topics such as "The Art of Making Mead" and "Publishing for the Moral Imagination."

The goal of MacDonald and The Inklings, noted Rohlin, was to reclaim an older vision of life in which physical realities corresponded to spiritual realities and nothing was considered purely material. The real divide was between "the seen and the unseen," not between the "spiritual and the material."

This worldview has been lost, even among many religious believers.

"Demons didn't stop existing, angels didn't stop existing, the saints didn't stop existing because the Industrial Revolution came," he said.


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Podcast: Much to learn in ongoing cases with cannabis church and yet another Christian baker

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Podcast: Much to learn in ongoing cases with cannabis church and yet another Christian baker

A cannabis church (It’s California) keeps fighting for freedom of worship.

Another Christian baker wins what may be a temporary (It’s California) First Amendment victory in her fight to stay in business, even though she declined to create a one-of-a-kind, artistic wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

What connects these two stories? That was the topic at the heart of this weeks “Crossover” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which was recorded this week while I was on grandfather duty. This post is a day late because I’ve been driving back to East Tennessee and it’s really hard to write in a car in cross winds on the High Plains.

The connecting link in the podcast is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 — or RFRA for short. This was a crucial piece of liberal (in the old sense of the word) church-state law backed by a stunningly broad coalition of religious and legal groups during the Bill Clinton administration. Try to imagine: There were only three “nay” votes in the U.S. Senate. Would that happen now? Clearly, the answer is “nay.’

These days, many reporters act as if “RFRA” was some kind of dirty, four-letter term that cannot be spoken in elite newsrooms. If you want some additional info on this syndrome, click here (“Covering a so-called 'religious liberty' story? Dig into religious liberty history”) or here (“Religious Left returns to RFRA: Washington Post explores a crucial Florida abortion showdown”).

The key is that RFRA doesn’t guarantee a victory for citizens who claim that their First Amendment rights have been violated. RFRA states that people have a right to argue that case and that — following some guidelines that have developed over the years — courts have to take these arguments seriously.

So let’s start with this Religion News Service headline: “Shuttered cannabis church takes fight to reopen to California Supreme Court.” Here’s the overture:

A cannabis church in Southern California — which was shut down by the county of San Bernardino over accusations it was illegally functioning as a dispensary — is taking its fight to reopen to the state Supreme Court, arguing that it uses cannabis for religious healing.


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Great Britain's first Hindu prime minister inherits a prominent role in Anglicanism

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Great Britain's first Hindu prime minister inherits a prominent role in Anglicanism

ry to imagine, say, U.S. President William Howard Taft, who was a Unitarian, involved with choosing bishops who rule the Episcopal Church, or President Joseph Biden, a Catholic, participating in the selection of bishops in the United Methodist Church.

After the historically brief leadership of Britain's Liz Truss, Conservative Party members of Parliament this week agreed on Rishi Sunak to succeed her as prime minister at a moment of severe economic and political turmoil.

Despite sporadic calls for a change in the system, this Hindu believer will have the unique task of proposing each new Church of England bishop for formal action by King Charles III, the church’s Supreme Governour and “Defender of the Faith.” Then again will that be “Defender of Faith” this time around?

The Sunak religious anomaly provides the media a sidebar to the astonishing ascent of this Anglo-Indian as the first “person of color” and first person from ethnic minorities to lead the British government. He’s also the first prime minister who is not at least nominally a Christian.

The Times of India reports Sunak has called himself a “proud Hindu” and regularly attends the temple in his hometown of Southampton. He has sworn his oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita rather than the Bible.

By coincidence, Sunak’s triumph occurred on Diwali, the annual festival of lights celebration when Hindus invoke the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity. The Times article depicts this 42-year-old’s remarkably prosperous corporate career and rapid political rise.


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The rise of nondenominational churches, a big news trend that's really hard to cover

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The rise of nondenominational churches, a big news trend that's really hard to cover

Maybe the biggest story in American Christianity over the last 40 years is the incredible rise in
the share of Americans who identify as nondenominational Protestant Christians.

In the 1970s, they were just a rounding error in the religious landscape. That was then.

Today it’s impossible to ignore the number of nondenominational churches — the vast majority of which are evangelical or Pentecostal — that have sprouted up in every city, suburb and rural area in the United States.

There are likely more nondenominational Protestants in the United States today than Southern Baptists and mainline Protestants combined. Yet, they are somewhat of an enigma to those reporters who cover religion.

Why? Because it’s impossible to make a lot of generalizations about this movement. It’s hard to pin them down, even when doing basic research.

The religious groups that are part of this non-movement movement don’t have annual meetings that are easy to track and for journalists to cover. They don’t have national spokespersons.

What makes it even more difficult is that many of these churches are, to some degree, still aligned with a denomination, but don’t publicize that on their websites or make mention of that in worship services.


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