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Crazy political stuff happening in churches right now, but which events get the elite ink?

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Crazy political stuff happening in churches right now, but which events get the elite ink?

It’s that time, once again. It’s time for the mainstream press to be terrified of that fact that, for millions of Americans, the content of their religious beliefs frequently has implications for what happens inside voting booths on Election Day.

This happens all the time on both the Religious Left and the Religious Right, although it appears to be more common in sermons on the political left (click here for more on that from Baptist progressive Ryan Burge).

If you have any doubts about press concerns about this issue, see this recent collection of headlines from one of those daily Pew Research Center emails about religion in the news:

* Churches are breaking the law and endorsing in elections, experts say. The IRS looks the other way — ProPublica

* Virginia pastor investigated for campaigning during church services — The Associated Press

* The senator-pastor from Georgia mixes politics and preaching on the trail — The New York Times

* Black church tradition survives Georgia’s voting changes — The Associated Press

* ‘We need to make America godly again.’ The growing political influence of Latino evangelicals — CNN

* Battle for Catholic vote inflames Pa. governor’s race — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Remember that GetReligion mantra: Politics is the true faith of most elite-newsroom professionals, who — functionally — believe that politics is the only answer If you want to get something done in the real world. Politics is real. Religion? Not so much. Thus, it is logical that religious faith is important to the degree that it affects politics.

Is the blue-zip-code press more worried about political influence on the conservative side of this equation? Of course, especially this soon after an earthquake like the fall of Roe v. Wade. I would also admit that, at the moment, the stunning rise of nondenominational, independent evangelical and Pentecostal churches has made it even harder for reporters to cover what is and what is not happening in the institutions that define conservative Christianity..

This brings me to that ProPublica investigation that hit social-media the other day: “Churches Are Breaking the Law by Endorsing in Elections, Experts Say. The IRS Looks the Other Way.”


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Plug-In: Faith and politics 2022: Five religion-news storylines in the midterm elections

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Plug-In: Faith and politics 2022: Five religion-news storylines in the midterm elections

I spent much of the past week on a Caribbean cruise, enjoying a vacation with my family.

Upon my return to the U.S., I discovered that — surprise! — a major election is fast approaching. Who knew?

Seriously, the 2022 midterms are next week, and once again, religion has emerged as a major factor.

Ahead of Election Day, here are five key faith-and-politics storylines:

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Georgia on my mind: A closely watched U.S. Senate race pits Republican Herschel Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner urged to run by former President Donald Trump, against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, who balances time in Washington with his role as a senior pastor in Atlanta.

Related headlines:

• Amid scandals, Herschel Walker hopes voters ‘believe in redemption’ (by Mary Jordan, Washington Post)

• The senator-pastor from Georgia mixes politics and preaching on the trail (by Maya King, New York Times)

• 6 midterm election races where religion could play a major factor (by Deborah Laker, ReligionUnplugged.com)

• Black church tradition survives Georgia’s voting changes (by Sudhin Thanawala and Gary Fields, Associated Press)

• Georgia pastor slams GOP nominee Herschel Walker in fiery sermon: 'We don't need a walker' (by Natalie Neysa Alund, USA Today)

2. ‘We need to make America Godly again’: CNN’s Nicole Chavez reports on “the growing political influence of Latino evangelicals.”

At Religion News Service, Alejandra Molina explores the central role of faith in Republican efforts to win Latino votes.


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Catholic LGBTQ voices rising in volume during Vatican's Synod on Synodality

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Catholic LGBTQ voices rising in volume during Vatican's Synod on Synodality

The "Chain of Discipleship" image showed five Catholics celebrating at a church, including a woman in priest's vestments and a person in a rainbow-letters "pride" shirt who is shouting, "We are the young people of the future and the future is now."

This art from the Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod rocked Catholic social media -- especially when it appeared on the Synod of Bishops Facebook page, linked to the ongoing Synod on Synodality that began in 2021.

Catholics at the local, regional and national levels are sending the Vatican input about the church's future. A North Carolina parish submitted testimony from "Matthew (not his real name)," who had been recognized as his Catholic high school's most popular teacher. While "hiding his homosexuality," he married "his partner elsewhere."

"They decide to foster, love and adopt young children internationally," said this report. "Matthew's greatest sadness is that he has to hide his sexuality in order to keep his job in a church institution and that he does not feel welcome in the Catholic Church precisely because of his sexuality which he considers God-given, and this despite his attempt to love the poor and destitute through his pro-life decision to adopt."

Case studies of this kind recently led Belgian bishops to approve a document -- "On Pastoral Closeness to Homosexual People" (.pdf here) -- containing a rite for priests blessing same-sex couples. The bishops appointed a gay layman as inter-diocesan coordinator for LGBTQ care in a land in which 3.6% of baptized Catholics attend Mass on an average Sunday.

Meanwhile, it's important that a Vatican working document includes the term LGBTQ and even LGBTQIA in discussions of topics once considered forbidden, said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic gay-rights network pushed aside during the Pope St. John Paul II era.


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Overlooked voting trend: Atheists and agnostics are a growing force for Democrats

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Overlooked voting trend: Atheists and agnostics are a growing force for Democrats

It’s hard to remember now, given the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but the day after votes were cast, one theme stood out — voter turnout.

Every state in the nation saw higher turnout in 2020 than 2016, according to an analysis from the Pew Research Center. Overall, there were more than 158 million votes cast, according to the Federal Election Commission — nearly 22 million more than just four years prior.

Turnout will likely play an outsize role in the 2022 midterms, too, as voters determine what political party will have control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in January 2023.

As a political scientist who studies the intersection of religion and politics, I am interested in which groups may have a strong impact on the balance of power. And if the data is any guide, there are two key communities political analysts often overlook — atheists and agnostics. Journalists need to be paying attention to these trends, as well.

In 2008, almost 8% of the entire U.S. population claimed to be atheist or agnostic, according to my analysis of data from the Cooperative Election Study, or CES — an annual survey coordinated by a team at Harvard University. Atheists believe that there is no higher power in the universe, while agnostics contend that a higher power may exist but it’s impossible to know for certain.

By 2021, that share had risen to just about 12%. But atheists and agnostics are often left-leaning in their political persuasion, and their rapid ascendance in the American religious landscape is proving much more consequential to the Democratic Party than the GOP.


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Podcast: Big Sexual Revolution victory in New York! Where's the elite news coverage?

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Podcast: Big Sexual Revolution victory in New York! Where's the elite news coverage?

I think I heard this D.C. Beltway question for the first time during the George W. Bush years, when I moved back to greater Baltimore and began teaching full-time at the Washington Journalism Center. It was a time of high expectations for cultural conservatives. As is usually the case, they faced disappointment when wins by the cultural left continued, even though W. Bush was “in power.”

The question: What happens to culturally conservative Republicans when they get elected to, oh, the U.S. Senate and then immediately start losing their nerve?

I heard an interesting answer during an off-the-record chat session with some Senate staffers. It helps to remember that this was back in the day when many people still had radios in their cars that had button systems that allowed them a limited number of pre-set stations they could quickly punch while driving.

The answer: There are two kinds of Republicans inside the Beltway — those who have NPR as the first button on their car radios and those who do not.

Unpacking that answer was crucial to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on media coverage, or the lack thereof, about a recent court ruling in an important LGBTQ rights case in New York.

Ah, but was this a case that LGBTQ-rights activists and Sexual Revolution evangelists wanted to see publicized? That’s one of the questions that host Todd Wilken and I discussed.

We will work our way back to the NPR symbolism angle. But first, here is some key material from the top of a New York Post report that ran with this headline: “NYC judge rules polyamorous unions entitled to same legal protections as 2-person relationships.” This is long, but important. First, there is this:

In the case of West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill, New York Civil Court Judge Karen May Bacdayan reportedly concluded that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same sort of legal protection given to two-person relationships.


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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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