White evangelicals, again: New York Times urgently probes praise music on political right

At this point, it’s safe to say that some New York Times editors are still engaged in a passionate quest to find a large group of Americans to blame for the 2016 general-election victory of Donald Trump of Queens.

There’s an obvious answer: White evangelicals. And it’s certainly true that independent and, especially, Pentecostal Protestants played a strategic role in the shocking rise of Orange Man Bad. It’s also true that independent evangelicals, fundamentalists, charismatics and Pentecostal believers have played high-profile roles in video-friendly pro-Trump events, including the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence — a mainstream White evangelical if there ever was one.

However, White evangelical voters were not the crucial Rust Belt voters that put Trump in the White House, although Latino evangelicals and charismatics were a major force in Florida

Therefore, what are discerning religion-beat readers supposed to make of that long, vague Times sermon that ran the other day with this dramatic double-decker headline? (Sorry for the delay getting to this piece, but surgery slowed me down last week.)

The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Movement’
Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.

Here is one strong opinion that is drawn — with his permission — from an email I received from Kenneth Woodward, for decades the religion-beat pro at Newsweek and the author of “Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Ascent of Trump.”

This is the most naive religion story I’ve read in decades and illustrates precisely why the Times still does not get religion. … Only the Times could publish a piece as misinformed as this one.

Why does Woodward think that? To some degree, he is blaming a newspaper story for lacking the kind of depth seen in interpretive magazine pieces produced during the glory years of religion-beat work at Newsweek and at Time by GetReligion patriarch Richard Ostling. For a short period of time, Emma Green was allowed to do similar work at the Atlantic.

Depth is an issue here. But this Times feature is quite long and has lots of room for anecdotes, when what is missing is a hard skeleton of facts that link (if this is possible) these vague trends and illustrations to actual denominations, publishing houses, parachurch groups, think tanks and academic institutions at the heart of American evangelicalism.

Spot the theology issue: Top hymns of a year in which COVID-19 touched everything

It's a hymn that the faithful start singing whenever a Baptist church organist plays the opening chords -- because everyone knows it by heart.

All together now: "When peace like a river attendeth my way. When sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say. … It is well, it is well, with my soul."

Chicago attorney Horatio Spafford wrote those words after losing his son to scarlet fever and then, a few years later, all four of his daughters in an 1873 shipwreck. His wife, Anna, survived and her telegram home from England began: "Saved alone. What shall I do?"

No one should be surprised that worship leaders frequently turned to "It Is Well With My Soul" as their people wrestled with the coronavirus pandemic, said the Rev. Roger O'Neel, who teaches in the worship and music program at Cedarville University in Ohio.

"People were feeling their way in 2020," he said. "It wasn't just the pandemic and people being locked down worshipping in (online) streamed services. We were also facing all the bitter political conflicts in our nation and the racial divisions that we were experiencing. …

"People were trying to find hymns that would speak to all of that, to the pain that everyone felt last year."

Faithlife, a Bellingham, Wash., company that publishes online worship and Bible study tools, recently released a report covering 2020 trends spotted in its Proclaim software. "It Is Well With My Soul" topped the hymns list, with usage increasing 68% after the pandemic hit.

The classic hymn "Great Is They Faithfulness" came next, with a 64% increase. It begins: "Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not. As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be. Great is Thy faithfulness! … Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided -- great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."