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Podcast: God knows, there's more to rising tensions in country music than politics

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Podcast: God knows, there's more to rising tensions in country music than politics

Gentle readers, here is the GetReligion question for this week.

Here we go: Who would you trust to know more about the complex cultural, moral, religious and, yes, political world of country music — the editors of Rolling Stone magazine or the late, great Johnny Cash?

I asked this question during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a Rolling Stone feature with this headline: “The Culture Wars Are Tearing the Close-Knit Country Music Community Apart.”

To cut to the chase, these country music fights are all about politics — of course. And also, it’s totally new (#NOT) for country stars to speak out on issues of culture, morality, family, politics, economics, race, etc. Forget that Hank Williams guy, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and lots of other superstars.

People like Cash. It helps to read this next quote slowly and imagine the Man in Black’s voice-of-God singing and speaking tones

:… When asked to describe his musical values, Cash preached country gospel: "I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And mother. And God."

Yes. there’s some politics in there — along with some other important topics.


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Religious folks played (#surprise) role in take-down of Beverly Hills late-term abortion clinic

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Religious folks played (#surprise) role in take-down of Beverly Hills late-term abortion clinic

California never lacks for culture wars of one sort or another.

It’s either Gov. Gavin Newsom threatening to sanction and heavily fine a school district for not embracing elementary school curriculum that mentions gay rights icon Harvey Milk.

Or it’s (Newsom again) closing California churches during the pandemic while allowing the film industry to stay open; an action that led to a Supreme Court decision against him.

Or it’s a clinic in Beverly Hills that was all set to allow third-trimester abortions until a group of activists —whose identity remains rather murky – prevented it from opening. The more I dug into this story, the more I realized this was a major take-down of an abortion clinic by protestors of faith.

First, the setting of it all, or part of the story, from the Los Angeles Times:

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last summer, Beverly Hills officials protested by lighting up the plaza in front of City Hall in a glow of pink.

Council members had already voted 5 to 0 for a resolution backing abortion rights. “We have stood up and spoken out when we’ve seen human rights taken away,” then-Mayor Lili Bosse stated after the vote. “This is something I wholeheartedly support with all my soul.”

But little more than a year later, the affluent city has become a battleground over reproductive rights.

An abortion provider that planned to open a clinic in Beverly Hills offering procedures beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy is alleging that the city “colluded and conspired” with antiabortion activists to force out the clinic.

What I find a bit disingenuous about such pieces is they don’t say what “beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy” means. Twenty-four weeks is when a child could — a conditional “could,” but a solid chance — live outside the womb. And beyond that, the chances get better with each week.

(The Centers for Disease Control, in its 2020 figures, estimated about 1% of all abortions occurred after 21 weeks; that is still 6,203 babies; if you accept the higher Guttmacher figures for that year, that is 9,301 births that never happened.)

Because the unborn child is fairly good size at this point, he or she must be dismembered piece by piece to aborted. You won’t find a description of this in current articles on abortion access, but it’s the inconvenient truth, to paraphrase Al Gore. Or the child gets an injection of lidocaine into its heart.

Which is why local residents — not to mention the landlord — may have had a slight problem with this happening in their neighborhood.


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If you haven't profiled the Catholic apologist Scott Hahn -- now's the time to act

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If you haven't profiled the Catholic apologist Scott Hahn -- now's the time to act

The Guy cannot recall any “legacy media” coverage of Scott Hahn, the influential U.S. Catholic lay theologian. If you haven’t done a feature on this fascinating Ohioan, here’s the ideal news peg -- Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops that begins at the Vatican October 4.

There’s Catholic dynamite here. Hahn, who has a huge parish-level following, stated via Facebook August 24 that he’s “grateful for Bishop [Joseph] Strickland’s inspiring words,” and posted a link to a new pastoral letter from the outspoken Texas conservative who is attacking the synod (and under increasingly fierce Vatican pressure to cease his dissent or be forced to resign).

Strickland warned that “schismatics” are promoting “evils that threaten” the church, and implied that Pope Francis himself (though unnamed) is facilitating their nefarious cause through his Synod on Synodality process.  See GetReligion backgrounder on the Synod dispute here.

Among reactions, founder Mike Lewis at WherePeterIs.com said he’s long admired Hahn’s contributions to the faith so it’s “deeply disappointing” that he is now embracing a “toxic” and “reactionary” movement that Catholics loyal to the papacy worry could produce a “schism coming from the far-right of the U.S. Church.”

Hahn, 65, is the longtime professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at Franciscan University, a growing liberal-arts stronghold devoted to “the authentic teachings of the Church.” Journalists who scan the websites for Hahn’s off-campus activities and his Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology will find he’s a popular speaker in person and via religious TV and radio, and a prolific producer of his own and others’ books, articles, DVDs, CDs, podcasts, online courses and conferences.

His organization, in its Catholic conservatism and independence from official church agencies, resembles the EWTN organization that grew from TV talks by the late Mother Mary Angelica beginning in 1981.

Hahn holds a Ph.D. from the Jesuits’ Marquette University in Milwaukee, but it’s significant that his divinity degree is from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a Northeast anchor of evangelical Protestant thought.


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Reuters should correct a correction? Polish rite to beatify family of nine killed by Nazis

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Reuters should correct a correction? Polish rite to beatify family of nine killed by Nazis

Does anyone remember newspaper “corrections”?

Let me explain the concept to younger GetReligion readers. Back in the days of ink-on-paper news, if a news organization made a mistake, the editors used to print an actual correction, noting the error and providing the correct information. Then, early in the online era, they would add a “correction” blurb at the top of a story and then insert a detailed correction at the end (or some variation on these items).

Then some, not all, news organizations simply started correcting mistakes — in the never-ending flow of online copy — without admitting that they made these mistakes in the first place. Thus, savvy news readers began making screenshots of errors they spotted, knowing that this was the only definitive way to prove the error ever existed.

Now, we have something really strange going on in the following Reuters news report: “Catholic Church to beatify Polish family, including new-born baby, killed by Nazis.”

If you follow Catholic Twitter, it appears that there were errors in an earlier version of this story.

Maybe. It’s hard to tell.

Then again, the current version of the story (as I wrote this) appears to contain a clash between two different accounts of this beatification story.

Start here: Note the “including new-born baby” reference in the headline.Then, let’s work through this, starting with the lede from several days ago:

VATICAN CITY, Sept 5 (Reuters) — The Catholic Church is to beatify a Polish family of nine including a new-born baby who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War Two, the Vatican's saint-making department said.


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Plug-In: Does traditional worship have a prayer post-pandemic? New reports offer info

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Plug-In: Does traditional worship have a prayer post-pandemic? New reports offer info

Last week we highlighted the return of a Washington state high school football coach who won the right to pray on the field.

Now, after just one game back, coach Joe Kennedy has resigned, “citing family concerns and a lack of support from school district officials,” as the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner reports.

In other news, X owner Elon Musk is accusing the Anti-Defamation League of, well, defamation, “claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have torpedoed X’s advertising revenue,” CNN’s Jordan Valinsky writes. At the heart of this battle is an Orthodox Jewish activist who is being defended by, wait for it, Musk.

Musk’s threat to sue the antisemitism watchdog extends the platform’s war of words, Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron notes. At the heart of this battle is an Orthodox Jewish activist who is being defended by, wait for it, Musk.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Greek Catholic bishops told Pope Francis that his praise for Russia’s imperial past “pained” Ukrainians, as The Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield details.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. Our big story concerns the state of worship attendance and giving after COVID-19.

What To Know: The Big Story

Post-pandemic challenges: For houses of worship, encouraging signs that a rebound is taking place are evident in a new study.


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New take on culture wars? American Muslims clash with the Sexual Revolution

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New take on culture wars? American Muslims clash with the Sexual Revolution

In terms of Islamic doctrine, alcohol is "haram," or forbidden, and the Quran is blunt: "O ye who believe! Strong drink and games of chance and idols and divining arrows are only an infamy of Satan's handiwork."

But it isn't hard to find Muslims that never boarded that bandwagon.

"There are Muslims who drink and get drunk. That's a fact, but that doesn't mean they can change what Islam teaches," said Yasir Qadhi, dean of the Islamic Seminary of America, near Dallas. "That's a sin. We all sin. But we cannot change our faith to fit the new norms in society."

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be controversial for Islamic leaders to affirm that their faith teaches absolute, unchanging truths about moral issues -- including subjects linked to sexuality, marriage and family life.

But Muslims in America never expected to be called "ignorant and intolerant" because they want public-school leaders to allow children to opt out of academic work that clashes with their faith. But that's what is happening in Montgomery County, Maryland, and a few other parts of the U.S. and Canada, where Muslim parents have been accused of cooperating with the cultural right, said Qadhi.

"That is so painful. … Truth is, we are not aligning with the political left or right," he added. "You cannot put Islam into a two-party world, where you have to choose the Democrats or the Republicans and that is that."

On the legal front, a Maryland district court recently ruled that parents do not have "a fundamental right" to avoid school activities that challenge their faith. The legal team for a coalition of Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians, evangelicals and others quickly asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the Mahmoud v. McKnight decision.

At the same time, Muslim leaders are debating a May 23 statement -- "Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam" -- signed by more than 200 Muslim leaders and scholars, representing a variety of Islamic traditions.


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Thinking just a little bit about Jimmy Buffett, the laid back Catholic troubadour?

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Thinking just a little bit about Jimmy Buffett, the laid back Catholic troubadour?

I wrote this short “think piece” just before heading out the door on a trip to our old stomping grounds in South Florida.

The timing is a coincidence, with zero connections to some follow-up reflections on my recent post — “New York Times offers flashback to sacraments offered by the priest of the Parrotheads” — about some religion “ghosts” linked to coverage of the late singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett.

I had no idea that there would be some Catholic-press coverage pointing to some faith-centered threads in his music. Hold that thought. Here is a small chunk of my GetReligion post noting the Big Idea in the Times story:

The basic idea is that the singer-songwriter was a kind of guru-priest who was looking at the humdrum lives being lived by millions of Americans. He saw this and, looking out from the center microphone on stage during his never-ending tours, he had compassion on them.

After all, he had seen this relationship before. When fans sang along in the crowd, it created, as noted in the Times feature, a “unified hum, reminding Mr. Buffett of the recitation of prayers in church during his altar boy days.”

Was there more to the theological content of Buffett’s lyrics than that? The Catholic News Agency offered a feature with the headline, “Jimmy Buffett: more Catholic than you think?”

While admitting that there was little overt Catholic content in the singer’s public life and remarks, this new piece dug back to earlier interpretive work by Stephen M. Metzger, writing for the Church Life Journal at Notre Dame University.

“[I]t is clear that Catholicism left an indelible mark on his imagination,” wrote Stephen M. Metzger, a scriptor (cataloguer of Latin manuscripts) and graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute. … Buffett attended St. Ignatius Catholic School and went on to graduate from McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, which remains the most prominent Catholic high school in Mobile, Alabama. 

Metzger said evidence of Buffett’s Catholic upbringing shone through in his work, even if his songs weren’t explicitly Catholic.


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Podcast: Attention Gray Lady folks! Latter-day Saints are not the only skilled fantasy scribes

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Podcast: Attention Gray Lady folks! Latter-day Saints are not the only skilled fantasy scribes

Two decades ago, I attended Nimbus 2003, the first global Harry Potter studies convention.

This colorful event, at a Disney hotel in Orlando, drew a capacity crowd of about 600 participants — about 90% of which were female — from the United States, England and Australia.

What kinds of people showed up and what does this flashback have to do with this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in)? Hold that thought. Here’s a bite of the “On Religion” column that I wrote about that event, one of many Harry Potter-related columns I have written over the years.

In hotel hallways, witch wannabes raised their expensive, professionally carved wands and fought imaginary duels with tickling spells and other incantations. In the lecture halls, others heard papers on everything from Harry Potter and the First Amendment to "Greenhouses are for Girls, Beasts are for Boys? Gender Characterizations in Harry Potter." …

Organizers also dedicated an entire track of lectures and panels to spiritual issues, addressing topics such as "Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Heavenly Virtues: Moral Development in Harry Potter" and "Can Any Wisdom Come From Wizardry?"

I was not surprised that a large number of the participants mentioned, in registration, that they were Wiccans or interested in other forms of neo-paganism. However, it was clear that at least half of the crowd of readers with marked-up Harry Potter books were mothers — often homeschool enthusiasts — who were Catholics, evangelical Protestants or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was important, some said, that author J.K. Rowling had outed herself, early on, as a communicant in the progressive Scottish Episcopal Church. She told a Canadian newspaper: "Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said, 'yes,' because I do. … If I talk too freely about that, I think the intelligent reader — whether 10 or 60 — will be able to guess what is coming in the books."

Now, this brings us to that fascinating New York Times feature that ran with this double-decker headline:

An Unexpected Hotbed of Y.A. Authors: Utah

A tight-knit community of young-adult writers who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has yielded smashes like “Twilight.” But religious doctrine can clash with creative freedoms

Yes, it’s interesting that Mormons play a major role in the world of fantasy fiction for children, teenagers and family-reading circles. I also thought it was interesting that editors at the world’s most prestigious newspaper have never heard of some other religious believers who have excelled as fantasy stars.

Can you say “Narnia”? How about “The Hobbit”? How about “A Wrinkle in Time”?


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