Culture Wars

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Relevant numbers, right now: Culture wars are alive and well on college campuses

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Relevant numbers, right now: Culture wars are alive and well on college campuses

I write a lot about religion and politics.

That’s led to some speaking engagements about my research to a wide variety of groups. I wish I could list all the audiences I have spoken to but it’s really run the gamut. I’ve given talks to some of the most liberal Protestants in the United States, but also to Southern Baptist church planters. I’ve spoken to non-religious groups in a variety of contexts including major corporations and members of Congress.

One thing that I try to do when I’m asked to give a talk is show up before my scheduled engagement and get a sense of the room. I want to see what type of people are gathered, if they have any reading materials handed out to participants and eavesdrop a little on conversations happening among attendees. I need to figure out the political and theological viewpoints of folks before I plow through my material — which can sometimes cause friction.

I mean, I talk about religion and politics. It may not go over well with every attendee in every room.

I would like to think that we all do things like that in our own lives when we are confronted with a new environment. We need to get a lay of the land before we strategize about how we fit in.

That’s certainly the case with the college experience. I think most students want to desperately fit in (it’s something we all do), and one way to make that easier is to make sure your politics aligns with the politics of your local environment.

That’s really the point of this post — trying to understand the political climate of college campuses right now and how individuals fit in to those larger environments. I am using the terrific dataset from The FIRE that I’ve been exploring in several posts this month. Like prior sets of analysis, I restricted my sample to just 18-25 year old folks who are attending a college or university in the United States.

Let’s start with a basic, yet important, question: what is the political partisanship of young folks based on their religious affiliation?

Pretty clearly there are two groups with a strong contingent of Republicans.


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Podcast: Another sexy version of the old New Age arrives, with the 'Secular Sabbath'

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Podcast: Another sexy version of the old New Age arrives, with the 'Secular Sabbath'

This podcast post really needs a soundtrack. So, please click on this Secular Sabbath video and leave it running. Then open the GetReligion post in a second browser window and start reading. This will help with the content — I promise.

This week’s “Crossroads” discussion (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focused on a timely, solid feature at The Free Press with this catchy headline: “Can You Find God in a Bikini?” The story was timely because, in many ways, this is a news story that has been with us for decades (if not for centuries, viewed from a theological, pre-electronic-trance-music point of view).

To understand my thinking here, it helps to follow a timeline linking a few books on this topic.

Let’s start here, with “Understanding the New Age,” which was researched in the late 1980s by the great religion-beat pro Russell Chandler. The key to this vague New Age thing, he said, is the movement’s “view of the nature of reality, which admits to no absolutes” and, thus, all “standards of morality” are “relative.”

In the mid-1990s, linked to another burst of New Age media buzz, I interviewed Chandler and the resulting “On Religion” column included this thesis:

A few years ago, most generic bookstores had a "New Age" section. Today, this is rare. But this doesn't mean that the wave of religious trends that crested in the 1980s simply vanished. Truth is, it soaked in.

"You don't see New Age shelves anymore because you can find New Age books in almost every part of the store," said Russell Chandler, an award-winning religion writer best known for his 18 years at the Los Angeles Times. "They're in the psychology section and over on the women's shelf. You'll find them under self-help, stress, holistic health and the environmental, too."

The day of New Age cover stories in news magazines may have passed, but that's beside the point. New Age faith, said Chandler, has "become so visible that it's now all but invisible."

Reading Chandler led me to New Age preachers such as Marianne Williamson (yes, she is seeking — again — the White House as a Democrat) and her bestselling book “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.”


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Podcast: America is splitting, says trending Atlantic essay. This is news? Actually, it's old news

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Podcast: America is splitting, says trending Atlantic essay. This is news? Actually, it's old news

In case you haven’t heard, controversial Supreme Court decisions are causing dangerous divisions in the United States of America.

Yes, I know. If you’re old enough you have been hearing people say that since 1973. And there is, of course, an element of truth in these statements, then and now. SCOTUS has become the only branch of government that matters when it comes to forcing one half of America to accept the legal, cultural and moral changes sought by the other half. Study several decades worth of presidential elections.

However, when it comes to mainstream media coverage, not all controversial Supreme Court decisions are created equal. If you have followed Twitter since the fall of Roe v. Wade, you know that large numbers of professionals in major newsrooms are freaking out.

Is this “new” news or old news? Truth is, arguments about red America (“Jesusland”) and blue America (“The United States of Canada”) have been getting louder and louder for several decades. This was the topic that dominated (once again) this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on this Ronald Brownstein essay at The Atlantic: “America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good.”

What’s interesting about this piece is that it says America’s divisions have nothing to do with traditional forms of religion, culture, the First Amendment or the U.S. Constitution (especially Federalism). No, this is a war about racism, period. SCOTUS has been seized by the enemies of reason and freedom and, thus, America’s future is at risk. This is a concept with serious implications for news coverage.

IT MAY BE TIME to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.

“When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people,” Podhorzer writes. “But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”

The bottom line:

To Podhorzer, the growing divisions between red and blue states represent a reversion to the lines of separation through much of the nation’s history. The differences among states in the Donald Trump era, he writes, are “very similar, both geographically and culturally, to the divides between the Union and the Confederacy.


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Podcast: Americans have long been divided (and often confused) on abortion issues

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Podcast: Americans have long been divided (and often confused) on abortion issues

When people ask me to list some must-read books — if the goal is understanding religion and the news — the first one I mention is “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America” by sociologist James Davison Hunter.

Pundits love to toss “culture wars” around as a kind of journalism hand grenade, but few bother to flash back to this 1991 classic and note how Hunter defined that term. In 1998 I wrote a column — “Ten years of reporting on a fault line” — in which I noted Davison’s description of America’s ongoing legal and political wars about religion, morality and culture.

The key: Americans were no longer debating specific religious beliefs or traditions. Instead, he said they were fighting about “something even more basic — the nature of truth and moral authority.”

… America now contains two basic worldviews, which he called "orthodox" and "progressive." The orthodox believe it's possible to follow transcendent, revealed truths. Progressives disagree and put their trust in personal experience, even if that requires them to “resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life."

The book Hunter wrote in 1994, right after “Culture Wars”? It was called “Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture Wars.” Hold that thought.

All of this brings me to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focusing on a new Lifeway Research study — on behalf of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — probing how religious faith and practice affect what Americans believe about abortion. The survey took place days before the leak of the draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The survey results are complex and will provide little comfort for those committed to a consistent pro-life stance or. on the other side, the defense of America’s pro-abortion-rights legal structures built on Roe.

In the podcast, I argued that this survey deserves mainstream media coverage — but I sincerely doubt that this will happen. Why?


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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

Over the past week or so, I have received several emails — while noticing similar messages on Twitter — from people asking: “Why is The Atlantic publishing the same story over and over?” Some people ask the same question about The New York Times.

It’s not the same SPECIFIC story over and over, of course. But we are talking about stories with the same basic Big Idea, usually framed in the same way. In other words, it’s kind of a cookie-cutter approach.

The key word is “division,” as in America is getting more and more divided or American evangelicalism is getting more and more divided. A new Ronald Brownstein essay of this kind at The Atlantic — “America’s Blue-Red Divide Is About to Get Starker” — provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

The villains in these dramas are, of course, White evangelicals or, in more nuanced reporting, a radical wing of the White evangelicals. Just this week, I praised the New York Times for running a feature that offered a variation on one of these templates: “Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics.” That piece showed progress, in part, because it undercut the myth of the evangelical political monolith on issues such as Donald Trump, COVID vaccines, QAnon, etc.

Let me make this personal. There is a reason that all of these stories written by journalists and blue-checkmark Twitter stars sound a big familiar to me. You see, people who have been paying attention know that the great “Jesusland” v. the “United States of Canada” divide is actually at least three decades old. It’s getting more obvious, methinks, because of the flamethrower social-media culture that shapes everything,

So let’s take a journey and connect a few themes in this drama, including summary statements by some important scribes. The goal is to collect the dots and the, at the end, we’ll look at how some of these ideas show up in that new leaning-left analysis at The Atlantic.

First, there is the column I wrote in 1998, when marking the 10th anniversary of “On Religion” being syndicated (as opposed to the 33rd anniversary the other day). Here’s the key chunk of that:

… In 1986, a sociologist of religion had an epiphany while serving as a witness in a church-state case in Mobile, Ala.


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Podcast: Thoughts on a third of a century as a columnist (and a symbolic SCOTUS ruling)

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Podcast: Thoughts on a third of a century as a columnist (and a symbolic SCOTUS ruling)

This week marked a rather symbolic anniversary for my national “On Religion” column, which I have been writing now for (#GULP) a third of a century.

As you would imagine, I spend some time thinking about the subject for this week’s column: “Why 'religious liberty' has ended up inside quotation marks.” This column was also the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Anyone who has followed my work with GetReligion and “On Religion” will not be surprised that I chose to write about the First Amendment and and a highly symbolic religious liberty case (no scare quotes there) at the U.S. Supreme Court.

But hold that thought. I’d like to walk through what are, for me, four symbolic columns I have written in the past, as I head into year No. 34.

That first column in 1988 was rather newsy: “Pat Robertson, evangelicals and the White House.” Here’s the lede on that:

On the morning before Easter, Pat Robertson stood in a pulpit under an American flag and a banner that read, "King of Kings, Lord of Lords."

Alas, change the name of the candidate and that still sounds rather relevant, considering the state of warfare inside American evangelicalism these days (see this must-read Richard Ostling post).

On the 10th anniversary of the column — that seemed like a long time, back then — I focused on a classic book by sociologist James Davison Hunter (“Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America”) that has greatly influenced my work as a journalist and as a professor. The column opened by describing an interesting trend at political and religious rallies at that time:


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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

While Pope Francis was presiding over a ceremony at the Vatican to consecrate Ukraine and Russia on March 25, a group of high-ranking American bishops met in Chicago.

That could be a news story.

The gathering at Loyola University — entitled “Pope Francis, Vatican II and the Way Forward” — was co-sponsored by Boston College’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. Its aim was, according to what news coverage there was, to create a dialogue between theologians and bishops.

“We want to show that opposition to Pope Francis — not universally, but to a large extent — is opposition to Vatican II,” said Father Mark Massa, a priest and historian of the American Catholic Church, to describe the goal of the meeting. “Francis is trying to cash the check that Vatican II wrote — synodality was the big thing.”

Synodality is an invitation to build deeper communion within the body of Christ, according to the Vatican, and part of a process the pope has embarked on this year to create dialogue between Catholic believers and clergy. Or a certain type of clergy.

In other words, moving forward into the spirit of Vatican II. That is a big news story.

The two-day meeting, by invitation only, didn’t appear to fit the description of synodality. Rather, as Massa said, it was meant to see “how we can move the American church away from these culture wars divided between conservatives and liberals … to a united position where it’s possible to be on a spectrum of positions and still be considered a good Catholic and not be called names by people who disagree with you.”

Critics in the conservative Catholic press read that statement to mean how the 70 prelates in attendance — with help from progressives within the American church in the form of academics, journalists and theologians — could bolster this pope’s agenda. Those on the Catholic left in the National Catholic Reporter billed it as a way bishops “can better support the agenda of Pope Francis.”

I reported at the end of 2021 that this year would “be the one where the battle between this pontiff and doctrinal traditionalists intensifies even further.” The culture war that is dominating our politics at the moment has spilled over into our religious institutions and the Catholic church’s hierarchy.


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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

Follow the money.

Those three little words guide journalists and prosecutors alike. And that explains the news potential of the Georgia-based National Christian Foundation (NCF), www.ncfgiving.com/ which to date has quietly given $14 billion to 71,000 non-profit groups, $1.3 billion of that last year, in both tiny and huge grants. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece recently noted that "mysterious" operation is "one of the most influential charities you've never heard of."

Writing last week for Ministry Watch (a news website that reporters should follow), GetReligion alumnus Steve Rabey reports that NCF became "the world's largest Christian foundation" largely through word-of-mouth referrals rather than promotional efforts. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which posted antagonistic coverage in February, ranks NCF as the nation's eighth-largest charity.

NCF calls itself a "ministry," and though it aids a wide range of secular non-profit charities it's a particularly important vehicle for religious donations from wealthy conservative Protestants who share its belief that "the entire Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God." The foundation's 26 offices around the U.S. handle donations -- contact info posted here -- so local angles for the media abound. (At national headquarters, Dan Stroud is C.E.O and Steve Chapman the media contact via info@ncfgiving.com or 404-252-0100.)

Rabey's piece includes a helpful link to the Guidestar.org posting of NCF's 593-page IRS Form 990 filed for 2019, with a listing of grant recipients that reporters will want to eyeball. The largest categories of donations ranged from local churches ($215 million) on down to medical care ($21 million). Major causes included evangelism, relief, education, children and youth work, museums, spiritual and community development, media and publishing, orphan care, Bible translation and ministry to the homeless.

NCF typifies the rising importance of "donor-advised funds" in U.S. philanthropy. The basic idea has existed for a century and was devised as a vehicle for Christian donors in 1982 by pioneering Atlanta tax attorney Terry Parker, still a board member, along with evangelical financial gurus Ron Blue and Larry Burkett.


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This week's podcast: It isn't 'fake news' to recognize that America remains a divided land

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This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was rather unusual. Instead of focusing on a specific bite of news, or a topic drawing coverage, host Todd Wilken and I spent most of our time discussing a new survey that I truly believe is worthy of coverage.

A key element of this study is the role that “fake news” plays in cleaving America into two warring cultures. However, that omnipresent term really isn’t defined. Apparently, when Americans think about “fake news” we are rather like U.S. Supreme Court justices contemplating pornography — they know it when they see it. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The key is that “fake news” has become the fightin’ word attached to the many ways in which a rising tide of advocacy media is tearing apart the foundation of American public discourse.

Here at GetReligion, we think that there is more to this than mere political bias. For decades, many — not all — American journalists have struggled to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of religious, moral and cultural issues (think “Kellerism”). This trend has now spread into other parts of American life, leaving far too many citizens, on left and right, locked inside concrete news and entertainment silos. For many citizens, the next step is to embrace conspiracy theories or even dangerous forms of rebellion.

All of these themes show up in the new study, “Democracy in Dark Times,” which is the 2020 edition of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s Survey of American Political Culture series. The team that produced it includes a scholar, sociologist James Davison Hunter, whose works — “Culture Wars,” for example — will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.

Think of it this way: This man wrote a book in 1994, a quarter of a century ago, entitled “Before the Shooting Begins.”

The new study, using terms central to Hunter’s book “To Change the World,” seeks to “understand not just the political weather, but the cultural climate shaping the election as well.” Here is a crucial passage — long, but essential — on the role advocacy media is playing:

The American public’s deep misgivings toward governmental and economic institutions extends to a suspicion of the media. Just over two-thirds (68%) of all Americans agree that “you can’t believe much of what you hear from the mainstream media,” and just under two-thirds (63%) believe that “media distortions and fake news” are a very or extremely serious threat to America.


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