The Oklahoman

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Looking ahead: What will be the big religion-beat stories during the year ahead?

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Looking ahead: What will be the big religion-beat stories during the year ahead?

This week’s edition marks the launch of Plug-in’s fifth year. If you enjoy it, please encourage friends to subscribe.

Black churches were hit hardest by the pandemic but did more to promote vaccines, according to a new study cited by ReligionUnplugged.com’s Clemente Lisi and Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks.

The Israel-Hamas war “has exposed a generational rift among U.S. Christians and their perceptions about the conflict.” Lifeway Research’s Aaron Earls details the differing views of young and old believers.

Also, a new national poll explores why most Republicans think former President Donald Trump is a person of faith. The Deseret News’ Samuel Benson delves into the findings.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start by looking ahead to the (expected) major news of 2024.

What To Know: The Big Story

Campaign 2024: Hey, guess what? It’s a presidential election year.

ReligionUnplugged editor Clemente Lisi rounded up what you need to know about the faith-angles when discussing the candidates. The Catholic-beat scribe here at GetReligion also offered five Catholic news stories and trends to watch in 2024.

At The Conversation, Tobin Miller Shearer predicts how politics and religion will mix in 2024. He suggests three trends to track.

What will make news?: It’s impossible to know — in advance — what stories will dominate our attention in 2024.

But members of the Religion News Service team share the headlines they anticipate — from papal “reforms” to psychedelics to the aforementioned presidential voting.


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Plug-In: Why faith still matters -- Bob Smietana on how religion is getting reorganized

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Plug-In: Why faith still matters -- Bob Smietana on how religion is getting reorganized

Religion reporter Bob Smietana’s “aha!” moment came a few years ago while covering a hurricane.

When a tornado, flood or other disaster occurs, so-called faith-based FEMA organizations typically play a crucial role in the relief effort.

“Usually, a bunch of church folks and other religious folks show up,” explained Smietana, a Religion News Service national reporter. “They cook meals, they clear trees, and they help people rebuild their houses and put their lives back together.”

But given the decline of organized religion in America, might those helpers — at some point — disappear? And if so, what might that mean for the nation’s social fabric? Such questions came to Smietana during his “aha!” moment.

“Something in my head went, ‘Oh, wait. All those people doing this faith-based disaster relief are usually older church folks, and most of them are White,’” he told me, noting the shrinking proportion of White Christians in America.

Reflecting on the hurricane volunteers, he realized, “There’s no one in the pipeline to replace those folks when they’re gone.”

The veteran Godbeat pro shared that anecdote as we talked about the ideas behind his insightful new book, “Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters”, which releases tomorrow.

Here’s how Worthy Publishing describes Smietana’s book: “A look at the ways the Christian church has changed in recent years — from the decline of the mainline denominations to the megachurchification of American culture to the rise of the Nones and Exvangelicals — as well as a hopeful vision for reimagining what the church might look like going forward.”

My own take: The 200-plus pages of “Reorganized Religion” certainly are timely, delving into long-term demographic trends while exploring challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and post-2020 political division.


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Plug-In: Faith groups continue to debate solutions to blitz of mass shootings in America

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Plug-In: Faith groups continue to debate solutions to blitz of mass shootings in America

God and guns.

After a string of mass shootings nationwide, conversations with people of faith inevitably turn to that subject.

Ken Factor and Lawson Vaughn are friends and fellow Christians. I met both while in Tulsa this past weekend to report on their church mourning the massacre of four people.

I asked Factor and Vaughn about possible solutions following the recent attacks at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, an Uvalde, Texas, school and a medical office in their own community.

Factor stressed that he has been a registered Republican for nearly 40 years.

But he said, “I think we need some kind of restrictions on guns. I don’t know that the Second Amendment applies to things like me deciding, ‘I’m going to go get an AR-15 today.’”

In Vaughn’s view, though, firearms aren’t the real problem.

“I think there’s something to be said just for the erosion of the home, the family,” he said. “I mean, it starts with raising kids to respect others and having families that go to church.”

As The Associated Press’ Deepa Bharath and Holly Meyer report, the recent shootings have exposed divisions on the gun issue in faith communities and raised this question: “Are you pro-life if you are pro-gun?”

At The Oklahoman, Carla Hinton offers in-depth coverage of religious views on gun control — including a letter signed by more than 50 leaders that was recently delivered to Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee.


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Plug-In: Reflections on a reporting trip to a Slavic congregation in Alaska

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Plug-In: Reflections on a reporting trip to a Slavic congregation in Alaska

On my first reporting trip to Alaska several years ago, I saw a moose by the highway and stopped to take a picture.

On a quick visit to the Last Frontier this past week, the only moose I personally encountered was the one that greeted me at the airport. I didn’t spot any bears either, except for the two behind glass in my hotel lobby.

Still, I enjoyed the breathtaking scenery — who doesn’t love snow-capped mountains? — and the opportunity to delve into two compelling religion stories firsthand.

My piece for ReligionUnplugged.com on an Anchorage church with members from Ukraine, Russia and other Slavic nations was published this morning. It focuses on that Russian-speaking congregation’s work to help Ukrainians fleeing their homes.

For The Christian Chronicle, I covered the first Alaska State Lectureship in three years. COVID-19 had prompted the cancellation of the previous two annual lectureships. Members of the state’s scattered-but-interconnected Churches of Christ were elated to be back together.

My favorite interview was with a couple in their 80s who live 26 miles above the Arctic Circle. Ron and Zona Hogan use a phone translation app to communicate in Spanish with newcomers from the Dominican Republic who attend their home church.

It’s good stuff. I hope you’ll check it out.

Power up: the week’s best reads

1. As Ramadan, Passover and Easter converge, an interfaith trolley rolls out: “The rare alignment of major Christian, Muslim and Jewish holidays is fueling a flurry of interfaith celebrations across the nation this month,” Mya Jaradat reports for the Deseret News.


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Plug-In: Online churches and virtual spirituality. Can we have a Wordle, please?

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Plug-In: Online churches and virtual spirituality. Can we have a Wordle, please?

Is online church good for your soul?

Can real fellowship be attained through virtual reality?

Amid a global pandemic, why has Wordle — yes, the online game — become a ritual for so many?

Compelling questions tied to faith and technology top this week’s religion headlines.

Check out these high-tech must-reads:

1. Streaming online has been a boon for churches, a godsend for isolated: “There’s been a lot of bad news about churches in recent years,” Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reports. “Online church has been one bright spot.”

Smietana’s piece follows Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren making the case in a viral New York Times column that churches should drop their online services.

“Online church, while it was necessary for a season, diminishes worship and us as people,” Warren argued, igniting debate on social media and drawing rebuttals from writers such as Religion Dispatches’ Daniel Schultz.

For more insight, see this Wall Street Journal column from last October, asking, “Are internet services as good as church?” Read a more in-depth version here at ReligionUnplugged.com.

2. Faith in the metaverse: A VR quest for community, fellowship: The Associated Press’ Luis Andres Henao writes about “many Americans — some traditionally religious, some religiously unaffiliated — who are increasingly communing spiritually through virtual reality, one of the many evolving spaces in the metaverse that have grown in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Ranging from spiritual meditations in fantasy worlds to traditional Christian worship services with virtual sacraments in hyperrealistic, churchlike environments,” Henao reports, “their devotees say the experience offers a version of fellowship that’s just as genuine as what can be found at a brick-and-mortar temple.”


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Plug-In: At 20th anniversary of 9/11, faith remains big part of this world-shaking story

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Plug-In: At 20th anniversary of 9/11, faith remains big part of this world-shaking story

Like everybody alive then, I remember what I was doing the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

At the time, I was religion editor for The Oklahoman, the metro daily in Oklahoma City. I was running a few minutes late that Tuesday because I stopped at Walmart to buy a new pair of cleats for a company softball team starting the fall season that night. As it turned out, we didn't play.

As I flashed my company ID at the security guard outside the newspaper building, he asked if I'd heard about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York. I had not. Minutes later, after I arrived in the ninth-floor newsroom, my colleagues and I watched on television as a second plane hit the twin towers. Almost immediately, ABC anchor Peter Jennings likened the attack to Pearl Harbor.

That's when I grasped the significance.

The rest of that day is a blur. Like my reporter colleagues all over the nation, I immediately put aside any personal feelings and operated on journalistic adrenaline. I wrote four bylined stories for the next day's paper: one on the religious community's response, one on Muslim fears of a backlash, one on Oklahoma City bombing victims' reactions and one on an eyewitness account by an Oklahoma professor's daughter.

Like many (most?) Americans, I tossed and turned that night.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, I recall interviewing religious leaders and ordinary congregants as they looked to God and sought to explain the seemingly unexplainable.

Twenty years later, faith remains a big part of the story. Here is some of the must-read coverage:

• Eastern Orthodox shrine to replace church destroyed on 9/11 nears completion (by Peter Smith, Associated Press)

• Generation 9/11 (by Emily Belz, World)

• Young Sikhs still struggle with post-Sept. 11 discrimination (by Anita Snow and Noreen Nasir, AP)


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Plug-In: Pastors and plagiarism -- why a very, very old story is making new headlines

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Plug-In: Pastors and plagiarism -- why a very, very old story is making new headlines

Two decades ago, while serving as religion editor for The Oklahoman, I investigated allegations of plagiarism and faked endorsements by a prominent Baptist pastor who had written a book.

I still remember how angry the 2002 story made some church members — at me for reporting it.

“One thing great preachers enjoy about traveling is that they can hear other people preach,” Terry Mattingly wrote in a 2003 “On Religion” column on plagiarism and the pulpit. “But the American orator A.J. Gordon received a shock during an 1876 visit to England. Sitting anonymously in a church, he realized that the sermon sounded extremely familiar — because he wrote it.”

While plagiarism by pastors falls under the category of “nothing new under the sun” (see Ecclesiastes 1:9), the subject is making timely new headlines.

Prominent among them: a front-page “Sermongate” story this week by New York Times religion writer Ruth Graham.

Credit questions over past sermons by Ed Litton, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, for the fresh interest in the subject.

Last week’s Weekend Plug-in pointed to related coverage by Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner. Check out, too, Mattingly’s recent GetReligion podcast on the topic.

Even before the Litton controversy, Smietana produced an excellent story earlier this year headlined “‘If you have eyes, plagiarize’: When borrowing a sermon goes too far” with a related piece on “Why some preachers rely on holy ghostwriters and other pulpit helps.”


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Plug-In: Tulsa Massacre centennial -- focusing on repentance, reconciliation, reparations

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Plug-In: Tulsa Massacre centennial -- focusing on repentance, reconciliation, reparations

TULSA, Okla. — Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a truly dark moment in America’s history.

At the centennial, a prayer room at a downtown Tulsa church focuses on the sins of 1921 while asking God to bring healing, as I report here at ReligionUnplugged.com.

In separate dispatches for The Christian Chronicle, I explain how faith drives two leading advocates fighting for massacre justice and detail the racial unity effort by two Tulsa-area ministers — one Black, one White.

New Associated Press religion writer Peter Smith reports from Tulsa on how houses of worship commemorated the massacre Sunday.

At The Oklahoman, longtime faith editor Carla Hinton and her colleagues offer in-depth coverage, including a compelling story on how a modern-day Moses helped rebuild Tulsa’s Mount Zion Baptist Church.

A strong narrative piece by AP’s Aaron Morrison opens with a scene from Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church, a congregation involved in a massacre reparations lawsuit that Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks highlights.

Check out the Tulsa World, too, for the latest developments, including a last-minute cancellation of a planned centennial event featuring John Legend and Stacey Abrams.


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Plug-In: Mourning two amazing people and journalists -- Rachel Zoll and Amy Raymond

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Plug-In: Mourning two amazing people and journalists -- Rachel Zoll and Amy Raymond

In 31 years of full-time journalism, I’ve been blessed to work with some incredible people.

The world recently lost two of the best.

Rachel Zoll was one of The Associated Press’ two New York-based national religion writers — along with Richard Ostling — when I joined AP’s Nashville bureau in 2002.

She was always so kind and supportive of me and my work, as she was with countless others. I last saw her at the 2017 Religion News Association annual meeting in Nashville. I had left AP more than a decade earlier, so I was surprised when she asked how my wife, Tamie, was doing. I had no idea she knew Tamie was battling autoimmune disease. But she did.

Early in 2018, Zoll was diagnosed with brain cancer. She died Friday in Amherst, Mass., at 55.

Her AP colleague David Crary, who called Zoll his “best friend at work,” wrote a truly touching obituary.

Zoll and Ostling were AP’s national religion dream team for five years until his retirement in 2006.

Ostling enjoyed a legendary career with Time magazine before going to work at AP and now, in retirement, with GetReligion. But he told Zoll during her illness that “on a day-to-day basis our work together was the highlight” of his time in journalism.

Amy Raymond and I both got our start working on The Talon campus newspaper at Oklahoma Christian University. I was excited when she joined The Oklahoman staff in 1997, a few years after me.

Although Raymond and I hadn’t worked together in nearly two decades, we stayed in touch via Facebook. We occasionally chatted about religious and political issues.

On a Zoom discussion Monday night, current and former colleagues kept saying — through tears — how smart and kind she was. That is the absolute truth.

“Amy started as a staff writer but her true passion became apparent as she made her way up the ladder as a copy editor, page designer, and then as night news editor,” my longtime friend and former Oklahoma Christian classmate Steve Lackmeyer wrote in The Oklahoman this week.


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