The Salt Lake City Tribune

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Plug-In: Yes, the March For Life faithful gathered, marking a new era after fall of Roe

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Plug-In: Yes, the March For Life faithful gathered, marking a new era after fall of Roe

Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers! We open with Dolly Parton, who celebrated her 77th birthday Thursday and gave the world a gift — a new song.

“I had a dream about God standing on a mountain, looking down on us, saying ‘Don't make me have to come down there,’” she said of her inspiration.

Give it a listen as we dive into the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith.

What To Know: The Big Story

Yes, opponents of abortion gathered for the annual March for Life on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Click here to see a research file on the mainstream coverage of this year’s event.

Fifty years after Roe v. Wade — and seven months after its overturning — the anti-abortion movement has “multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease.”

That’s the assessment of The Associated Press’ David Crary. The movement has reached a crossroads, as The New York Times’ Ruth Graham notes. And since last year’s ruling, the fight has moved to statehouses, as noted in this report from Religion News Service.

Stand for Life: A new organization with Southern Baptist ties “will bridge anti-abortion groups … as the larger movement redirects focus in a major way,” The Tennessean’s Liam Adams points out.

More: In Missouri, religious leaders who support abortion rights filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the state’s abortion ban, AP’s Jim Salter reports. At the same time, Indiana’s top court is weighing a challenge to that state’s abortion ban.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Family slain in Utah: “The seven caskets sat in a neat row at the front of the quiet chapel.”

That’s how The Salt Lake Tribune’s Courtney Tanner begins her sensitive, nuanced coverage of the funeral for a Latter-day Saint family — five children, their mother and their grandmother.

The man who killed his family had been investigated two years prior for child abuse, according to AP’s Sam Metz.


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Podcast: Are Brigham Young sports controversies about sports, religion or politics?

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Podcast: Are Brigham Young sports controversies about sports, religion or politics?

I have a journalism question, one that will require some time travel. Let’s flash back to the 2021 football game between the Brigham Young Cougars and the Baylor Bears, which was played in Waco, Texas, an interesting city known to many as “Jerusalem on the Brazos.”

After the first BYU score, a significant number of Baylor students are heard chanting “F*** the Mormons!” over and over. Or maybe, since we are talking about folks from a Baptist university, the chant is “Convert the Mormons!” The chant doesn’t focus on the “Cougars,” but on BYU’s obvious heritage with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The chants were strong enough to be heard on broadcast media and, within minutes, there are clear audio recordings posted on social media.

My question, a which I asked during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in): Would this nasty, crude event be considered a valid news story? In national coverage, would the religious ties of the two schools — soon to be rivals in the Big 12 — be discussed? In other words, would this be a religion-news story, as well as a sports story?

I think it’s pretty obvious that the answers would be “yes” and, again, “yes.”

This brings us, of course, to two BYU sports stories from recent weeks — one that received massive national coverage and the other that, well, didn’t get nearly as much ink. I think it’s valid to ask "Why?’ in both cases.

Before I share some links to coverage of the two stories, let’s pause and consider this related Religion News Service report: “Nearly 200 religious colleges deemed ‘unsafe’ for LGBTQ students by Campus Pride.” Here is the overture:

Dozens of religious universities across the country, including Seattle Pacific University in Washington and Brigham Young University in Utah, were listed as unsafe and discriminatory campuses for LGBTQ students by Campus Pride, a national organization advocating for inclusive colleges and universities.

Fewer than 10 of the 193 schools on the list released Thursday (Sept. 8), were not religiously affiliated or did not list a religious affiliation, according to Campus Pride.

The lengthy Campus Pride report on BYU opens with this statement (the shorter Baylor item appears here):

Brigham Young University has qualified for the Worst List because it has an established and well-documented history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination that endangers victims of sexual assault and has resulted in a call for it to not be included as a Big 12 school.

The key word, of course, is “endangers.”


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LDS church leaders enact a major breakthrough on secrecy next Wednesday

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Mitt Romney’s explanation that he voted to expel President Donald Trump as a duty to God, followed by the president’s religious scorn, renews interest in the senator’s well-known devotion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Journalists also need to know that the nation’s fourth-largest religious body will also be in the news on February 19 for a very different reason. For the first time it will grant members (and thus the media and the public) full access to its governing rulebook.

This is a major breakthrough. The General Handbook prescribes the exercise of powers, procedures, and policies that define the church. The quasi-official Encyclopedia of Mormonism says it is “pre-eminent among Church publications” as “an authoritative guide.” But the contents were long kept secret except for those appointed to church offices.

Religion News Service’s “Flunking Sainthood” columnist Jana Riess, author of the 2019 book The Next Mormons (Oxford), noted that since only males hold office, as a woman she’s been denied access to policies “that potentially affect my life” and open access “helps to empower the general membership” of both genders.

We’re dealing here with the most secretive of America’s major religions.

Its strictly-held financial information is the stuff of legend. The texts of the sacred rituals in temples are kept confidential, and non-members and church members who lack their bishop’s approval cannot attend. (There’s special angst when non-LDS family members cannot witness temple weddings.)

Likewise, the Handbook was carefully distributed with numbered copies that were to be destroyed when no longer in use.


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Nonprofit groups destined to command big chunk of journalism? What about religion news?

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As the 2020s dawn, the Internet-ravaged newspaper business is paying close attention to The Salt Lake Tribune, long known for independent-minded reporting that includes stellar religion coverage by Peggy Fletcher Stack and colleagues. The  148-year old Trib is conducting an experiment as the first important U.S. daily to turn non-profit. 

A related phenomenon is wealthy investors who needn’t fret about profits purchasing, e.g., the Boston Globe, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Diego Union-Tribune, Washington Post, Time magazine and The Atlantic. (The latter made good use of a $490,000 Henry Luce Foundation grant for religion coverage.) 

Are charities and nonprofit groups destined to command a major chunk of American news reporting, including religion coverage? 

 On the religion beat, we see The Associated Press’s deal to distribute copy from two non-profits, Religion News Service (which has emphasized opinion pieces in recent times) and TheConversation.com (which re-frames scholars’ thinking for general audiences).  This innovation is funded by $4.9 million from the Lilly Endowment. (Disclosure: The Guy was an AP religion writer 1998-2006). 

An example of this newborn joint operation is “Reparations and Religion: 50 Years after ‘Black Manifesto’,” a solid  RNS article The AP transmitted December 30 that was widely picked up online by other media.

Notably, the article has a double byline. Matthew Cressler, no journalist  but a religion-and-race scholar at the College of  Charleston, is named first out of alphabetical order, indicating priority over co-author Adelle Banks, a well-respected RNS reporter.


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Mormons, in the end, fare well in Washington Post story about refugee welcome in Utah

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Often, stories about people of faith and refugees end up casting the former in a negative light for refusing to be of help to the poor and tired, huddled masses.

But a roving reporter for the Washington Post got wind of something unusual; how a deep red state was refusing to go along with President Donald Trump’s anti-refugee policy. This happened to be Utah.

The ensuing piece makes for a very good read. My one caveat is that a major factor in refugee welcomes doesn’t get mentioned until the 30th paragraph.

Other media, such as this Vox video, got the point right away that Mormons have everything to do with Utah’s unusual refugee policy. This Wall Street Journal story made the Mormon connection in the fourth paragraph.

This fall, President Trump signed an executive order that, for the first time, gives states and cities the authority to veto refugee resettlements. The move alarms refugee advocates, who fear a wave of xenophobic demagoguery as governors and mayors seek to prove their anti-immigrant credentials by banning new arrivals.

That still may happen, adding to the strain on a once world-class resettlement program that has been crippled by cuts since Trump took office.

But in Utah — deeply conservative, deeply devout, predominantly white Utah — the response has been altogether different. The governor, a Republican who aligns with Trump on most issues, wrote the president a letter in late October.


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Tensions on Religious Right? Did you notice Trump's political kill shot on Rep. Mia Love?

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If journalists really want to grasp the importance of the splits that the Donald Trump era is causing among religious conservatives, there are some logical places to look.

Obviously, they can look at the world of evangelicalism and, yes, even inside the complex world of white evangelicalism. Please start here.

Then they can narrow that down by looking at the generational and gender tensions inside the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest non-Catholic flock.

Journalists can also look at what is happening in Utah — starting with Trump’s astonishing — well, maybe not — personal shot at Rev. Mia Love, the GOP’s only black woman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Here is the top of a report from The Salt Lake Tribune:

President Donald Trump praised Republicans for expanding their majority in the Senate on Wednesday, while offering harsh criticism to GOP House members — including Utah’s Rep. Mia Love — who failed to wholeheartedly embrace his agenda.

Trump said Love had called him “all the time” asking for help freeing Utahn Josh Holt, who had been imprisoned in Venezuela. But her re-election campaign distanced itself from his administration, the president said, which led to her poor performance in Utah’s 4th Congressional District.

“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost,” Trump said. “Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

Part of what is going on in that Utah vote is the increasingly important rural vs. urban divide in American life (check out the voting pattens in that district). Also, see this recent New York Times feature about some of the nuances in this particular Congressional race.

By the way, Trump served up his political kill shot on Love while votes are still being counted in Utah’s fourth district.

So, back to the Utah context. This president is even less popular in the urban Salt Lake City area than he is in the rest of deep red, Republican Utah — where politics are soaked in the conservative, but more gentle, style of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


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