Worship

If a NFL coaching legend quotes scripture in a press conference, does it make a sound?

If a NFL coaching legend quotes scripture in a press conference, does it make a sound?

One more time.

For years, Bobby Ross, Jr., and I have written lots of posts about religion-shaped holes in mainstream sports coverage. Apparently, very few GetReligion readers were interested in this topic (as opposed to, let’s say, the American audience for a prime NFL game).

But we soldiered on. This brings me — one last time — to a curious case study involving my Baltimore Ravens (who are still in the Super Bowl hunt, at this point).

Recently, a commentator on one of the dozens of NFL commentary shows asked an interesting question: Why don’t we talk more about the ongoing success of John Harbaugh, the Ravens head coach since 2008? No one had a good answer.

But I will ask a related question: After the Raven’s 34-20 playoff victory over the Houston Texans, which video clip was easier to find? The one (a) with Harbaugh showing his dad-style dancing moves in the joyful locker room or the one (b) in which he opened his press conference, with a very serious tone of voice, with a favorite Bible quote?

Click those Google links and you will see that, once again, the role that Christian faith (Catholic, to be specific) plays in the life and work of this future Hall of Fame coach is a “conservative” news story. Period. The viral dancing moves are much more important.

Which element of these two elements of Harbaugh’s personality is the most important in his life and work? The most accurate answer is “BOTH.”

However, I suspect that Harbaugh would say that his faith is more important. This brings me to the point that Ross and I have tried to make about the faith-shaped hole in most sports news coverage (and Clemente Lisi has noted this in global soccer coverage, as well). We are not stating that it is automatically news when sports personalities talk about their faith. It is new when they consistently cite their faith as a crucial factor how and why they do what they do in their career and life.

In this case, Fox News (naturally) went with the basic facts: “Ravens head coach John Harbaugh recites Bible verse to open press conference after playoff win.”


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Can 'orthodox' colleges and universities survive clashes with the Sexual Revolution?

Can 'orthodox' colleges and universities survive clashes with the Sexual Revolution?

As America's second-oldest Lutheran college, Roanoke College in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley proclaims that it is "never sectarian" in outlook, while maintaining that "critical thinking and spiritual growth" are essential.

The online spiritual-life page also offers this advice: "We encourage you to follow your own personal spiritual path while here at Roanoke." The collage "honors its Christian heritage" and its affiliation with the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by stressing "dialogue between faith and reason," according to its "Mission & Vision" statement. "Diversity, inclusion and belonging" are strategic goals.

These commitments are "so informal that it's hard to call them doctrinal commitments at all," said Robert Benne, a retired Roanoke College professor who founded its Benne Center for Church and Society. "This is what you see in many Christian colleges. … These vague commitments go along with efforts to embrace whatever is happening in modern culture."

This isn't unusual, he stressed, after studying trends in Christian higher education for decades. In the post-pandemic marketplace, an increasing number of small private schools -- religious and secular -- face economic and enrollment challenges that threaten their futures.

Leaders of many Christian colleges and universities face a painful question as they try to stay alive: When seeking students and donors, should administrators strengthen ties to denominations or movements that built their schools or weaken the ties that bind in order to reach outsiders and even secular students?

If the goal is to remain committed to traditional Christianity doctrines -- in classrooms and campus life -- academic leaders need to take specific steps to build academic communities that can survive and thrive, said Benne, in a new essay for the interfaith journal First Things.

Any "serious Christian school" has to "have an explicit, orthodox Christian mission and it has to hire administrators, faculty, and staff for that mission," he wrote. "It has to have a fully informed and committed board that insists on those things happening. Without that there will be a slow accommodation to secular, elite culture. Indeed, if a college or university has swallowed that ideology whole, orthodox Christianity will move out as it moves in."


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Podcast: Carefully entering the hall of mirrors created by the 'God Made Trump' video

Podcast: Carefully entering the hall of mirrors created by the 'God Made Trump' video

I will not apologize for the fact that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) contains lots of questions and few answers.

In a way, the whole “God Made Trump” video ruckus is a house of mirrors full of questions.

Nevertheless, you cannot follow what Americans call “politics” without pondering the role that religious language is playing these days. At the same time, it’s impossible to ignore the role of humor — including brutal satire — in all of this. Put religion and humor together (with a dash of AI) and all hades breaks loose.

The New York Times offered a straight-faced news story about a trend that is a threat to democracy when used by conservatives and, in particular, the MAGA Orange Man Bad team. What about the satire on the other side, which is usually offered by billion-dollar platforms in mainstream media and late-night entertainment? That isn’t relevant. Meanwhile, here’s that double-decker Times headline:

Iowa Pastors Say Video Depicting Trump as Godly Is ‘Very Concerning’

The viral video shows the former president, in starkly religious, almost messianic tones, as the vessel of a higher power sent to save the nation.

The big question here that the Times team never asks: To what degree is the “God Made Trump” video satire or a wink-wink salute to a certain tribe of Trump supporters in some pews? Hold that thought, because asking that question leads to those hall-of-mirrors questions.

This Times piece is all serious all the time. Here is a key byte of that:

The clip’s authors are members of the Dilley Meme Team, an organized collective of video producers who call themselves “Trump’s Online War Machine.” The group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, describes himself as Christian and a man of faith, but says he has never read the Bible and does not attend church. He has said that Mr. Trump has “God-tier genetics” and, in response to outcry over the “God Made Trump” video, he posted a meme depicting Mr. Trump as Moses parting the Red Sea.


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Handy religion info for political-desk files: Iowa is not a very evangelical state

Handy religion info for political-desk files: Iowa is not a very evangelical state

I don’t know if you knew this or not, but there was a bit of a dustup in Iowa’s Capitol building a few weeks ago. Here’s a quick summary.

The statehouse has a policy that allows different groups to put up a display for a period of time. The Satanic Temple made a written request to use this opportunity to display a Baphomet statue. After some back and forth on details, it was approved.

The display went up and folks got angry. The governor urged folks to pray over the building.

A Mississippi man, Michael Cassidy, drove across the country, entered the State Capital and destroyed the display with a hammer.

Cassidy was charged with a crime for his actions. However, there is a small (but very vocal) contingent of true believers on X (formerly Twitter) that believes Cassidy to be a hero and that all charges should be dropped.

The following tweet is illustrative of that (and click here for tmatt’s GetReligion post on the media coverage). But, I would argue that Ben Zeisloft has a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the religious composition of Iowa. In fact, Iowa is not some throwback to when America was very religious. Just the opposite - it reflects the overall movement away from religion in places where it used to dominate.


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In terms of pews, who is more likely to wrestle with mental illness? Answer: liberals

In terms of pews, who is more likely to wrestle with mental illness? Answer: liberals

It’s bizarre to even type these words, but the COVID-19 pandemic began almost five years ago in the United States. Lockdowns were instituted in March of 2020.

That’s such a weird time capsule for lots of us. I know that we all could write a book about the emotions we experienced and how that period of social isolation impacted our lives.

But, I’m a social scientist, and for all the death and destruction that COVID-19 brought to the United States and every other country on Earth, it also gave us a tremendous window into how folks handled mental stress in near real time.

In fact, the Pew Research Center put a poll into the field in late March of 2020. That was less than a week after many states began to shut down schools and businesses as a mitigation strategy for the spread of COVID-19. They made the data publicly available for download.

I was reading Jonathan Haidt’s Substack over the break, specifically this post: “Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest.” He highlights a specific question, “Has a doctor or healthcare provider EVER told you that you have a mental health condition?” His post is mostly about topics like gender, age and partisanship.

However, the Pew poll also asks about religion — so let’s get to digging.

I broke the sample down into liberals, moderates and conservatives and then again by larger religious tradition. Here’s the share who said that they had been diagnosed with a mental health condition.


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Why do 'people' celebrate Three Kings Day, as opposed to Epiphany and Theophany?

Why do 'people' celebrate Three Kings Day, as opposed to Epiphany and Theophany?

I have to admit that I experienced a sense of excitement, mixed with dread, when I saw the following headline this weekend, care of the Gannett wire here in Tennessee: “Why is Three Kings Day celebrated? Epiphany? And what does Rosca de Reyes have to do with king cakes?”

Most of the time, the contents of The Knoxville News Sentinel is dominated by University of Tennessee sports, coverage of bad Republicans doing bad things and updates about business and real-estate news in downtown neighborhoods favored by hip readers.

Coverage of the Feast of Epiphany — which follows the oft forgotten 12 days of Christmas — had the potential to offer unique details about traditions in local churches. But stories about Christian holy days are hard for many newsrooms, since they involve lots of picky facts about, you know, “religious stuff.”

OK, so what is wrong with this lede?

People around the world will celebrate Three Kings Day this weekend.

That lede could have said “Christians” and that would be vague, but OK. But, “people”?

Let’s keep reading, because things get a bit better and also rather strange at the same time.

In Hispanic communities, the day is known as Día de Los Reyes and is celebrated on Jan. 6 which is Saturday this year. The day is meant to honor the story revolving around the Three Wise Men or Magi who came to bring baby Jesus gifts after his birth. For those of the Christian and Catholic sects, it is known as the Epiphany.

The Hispanic reference is helpful, since Día de Los Reyes is a big deal and it’s totally appropriate in many zip codes to stress that. But what, in heaven’s name, is the point of this: “For those of the Christian and Catholic sects, it is known as the Epiphany.”

Think about that for a second. Catholicism is a “sect,” as opposed to being the world’s largest ancient Christian communion? And what are the other “sects” we are talking about here?


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

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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Flashback to 1997: Times legend A.M. Rosenthal on press ignoring religious persecution

Flashback to 1997: Times legend A.M. Rosenthal on press ignoring religious persecution

The U.S. State Department churns out many newsworthy reports, a few of which make news while the rest vanish into circular files.

In July [1997], the state department finally released its first report on religious persecution in 78 nations. A spokesperson reminded reporters that it was Congress that mandated the 56- page document's emphasis on the persecution of Christians. The state department, stressed John Shattuck, doesn't view this "as more important than other topics involving religious freedom."

On Capitol Hill, critics noted that the report was six months overdue and came weeks after pivotal congressional votes on Most Favored Nation status for China. It created a few media ripples, then vanished. The Religion Newswriters Association did name the state department report as its eighth most important news story of 1997.

On Nov. 16, there was another newsworthy event – a global day of prayer on behalf of the persecuted church. About 8 million Americans in 50,000 Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations took part, pledging themselves to keep praying and to seek changes that would help persecuted believers.

This event received even less news coverage than the state department report. The end-of-the-year ballot mailed to religion-news specialists didn't even mention it.

"That's astonishing. It's quite depressing, actually," said retired New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal. "That state department report was nothing – it was a non-story. It was patched together out of old information and then they delayed it as long as possible to minimize its impact. The only reason that report even existed was because of the movement against religious persecution and all of the pressure it has been putting on Congress. That's the story."

The day of prayer was even perfectly timed to justify major news coverage.


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Thinking (with Clemente Lisi) about faith angle among the major White House hopefuls

Thinking (with Clemente Lisi) about faith angle among the major White House hopefuls

The 2024 presidential race will intensify in the coming weeks and months as we enter the primary season. The election season begins in earnest with the Iowa Caucuses on Jan. 15 and the New Hampshire primary eight days later.  

The Republican primary field has narrowed in recent months following a string of debates — although most polls show former President Donald Trump with a huge lead

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, faces some primary challengers, but is expected to be the Democratic Party’s nominee once again. 

As always, moral and cultural issues linked to religious faith are playing a major role in the White House campaign. Thus, here is some basic information to ponder about the major candidates.

REPUBLICANS

Donald Trump — Former president of the United States

Age: 77

Religion: Raised mainline Presbyterian, now a nondenominational Christian 

Bio: Trump is a real-estate mogul who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Despite a myriad of legal issues and the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, Trump remains the GOP’s frontrunner for the nomination.

On religion: “I grew up going to church with my family in New York City. My parents taught me the importance of faith and prayer from a young age. Though I was confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian.” 


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