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The gift that keeps on giving (headaches): More media schizophrenia on evangelicals, Trump

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Our editor Terry Mattingly already wrote today's definitive GetReligion post on evangelicals and the #NeverTrump movement.

If you haven't already, check it out.

But I couldn't resist pointing out the latest media schizophrenia on whether evangelicals/social conservatives/whatever you want to call them will rally to support Donald Trump now that he's the presumptive Republican nominee.

Over at NPR, the news of the day is that many evangelicals can't bring themselves to jump on the Trumpwagon.

But if you believe the front page of the New York Times, social conservatives are "warming to the idea of Trump."

Anybody else's head spinning yet? (Besides Jose Bautista's, I mean.)

So who should readers believe: NPR or the Times?


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Hey Washington Post czars: Evangelicals and Catholics are irrelevant in #NeverTrump camp?

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It you have followed Republican politics over the past quarter century or so, you know that GOP White House wins have often been linked to what researchers have called the "pew gap," especially when there are high election-day vote totals among white evangelicals and devout Catholics.

That "pew gap" phenomenon can be stated as follows: The more non-African-Americans voters attend worship services, the more likely they are to vote for culturally conservative candidates -- almost always Republicans.

As I have stated before, it's hard to find a better illustration of this principle than the overture of the 2003 Atlantic Monthly essay called "Blue Movie." This piece focused on a campaign by Bill, not Hillary Rodham, Clinton, but it remains relevant. This passage is long, but remains essential -- especially in light of the very strange Washington Post piece about the remnants of the #NeverTrump movement that is the subject of this post. The Atlantic stated:

Early in the 1996 election campaign Dick Morris and Mark Penn, two of Bill Clinton's advisers, discovered a polling technique that proved to be one of the best ways of determining whether a voter was more likely to choose Clinton or Bob Dole for President. Respondents were asked five questions, four of which tested attitudes toward sex: Do you believe homosexuality is morally wrong? Do you ever personally look at pornography? Would you look down on someone who had an affair while married? Do you believe sex before marriage is morally wrong? The fifth question was whether religion was very important in the voter's life.
Respondents who took the "liberal" stand on three of the five questions supported Clinton over Dole by a two-to-one ratio; those who took a liberal stand on four or five questions were, not surprisingly, even more likely to support Clinton. The same was true in reverse for those who took a "conservative" stand on three or more of the questions. (Someone taking the liberal position, as pollsters define it, dismisses the idea that homosexuality is morally wrong, admits to looking at pornography, doesn't look down on a married person having an affair, regards sex before marriage as morally acceptable, and views religion as not a very important part of daily life.) 


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Trigger warning! Kenneth Bae book about North Korea ordeal may include faith content!

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In a way, this short post is not about Kenneth Bae and he horrors he endured doing hard labor in North Korea.

In a way, this short post is also not about his book on that topic.

I reality, this short post is about CNN and the attitude that someone in the editorial process there has toward the Bae book and (trigger warning: The following language may offend some readers) its religious content.

As a faithful GetReligion reader put it in an email about this particular CNN report, "Kenneth Bae: '735 days in North Korea was long enough' ":

Check out the second-to-the-last graph and see if you don't find yourself tempted to find the nearest brick wall against which you can bang your head.

But first some context, for those who are not following this story (which will soon be the subject of an Ira Rifkin "Global Wire" post:

(CNN) Kenneth Bae spent almost two years performing grueling work for the North Korean regime -- and had another decade of hard labor ahead of him.
But he's no longer shoveling coal and hauling rocks. Instead, the American sat down with CNN's Chris Cuomo ... for his first live interview since his 2014 release.


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Wine? Juice? Water? Wheat bread? What should be served at Holy Eucharist?

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Wine? Juice? Water? Wheat bread? What should be served at Holy Eucharist?

GORDON’S QUESTION:

Why do some Christians use (unfermented) grape juice or leavened bread in Communion since what was on the table at the Last Supper was almost certainly unleavened bread and fermented wine?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The Bible records that on the night of Jesus’ arrest he blessed and distributed bread saying “take; this is my body,”  and shared a cup saying “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” He concluded with “do this in remembrance of me,” and billions of Christians have done just that across the centuries in rites known as Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Mass, Holy Eucharist or Divine Liturgy.

Historians assume that, yes, Jesus’ “Last Supper” would have consisted of commonplace fermented wine, not fresh and non-alcoholic grape juice, and bread without leavening since this occurred during Jewish Passover. Modern Christians differ on the elements they serve, as we’ll see, but there’s a limit. Believers were offended by a TV ad produced for the 2011 Super Bowl (but never aired) with a pastor boosting church attendance by providing sacramental Doritos and Pepsi.

Roman Catholic canon law is precise about using the literal elements from the Last Supper at daily Masses.


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Dare ya! Just try to imagine a Texas 'way of life' that doesn't include a lot of religious stuff

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Dare ya! Just try to imagine a Texas 'way of life' that doesn't include a lot of religious stuff

Believe it or not, candidate Barack Obama was not talking about Texas when he was taped explaining the whole red-zip-codes God, guns and gays puzzle to the elite audience at a San Francisco fundraiser back in 2008.

Think back. You may recall that he was talking about the culture of small towns and working-class people in Pennsylvania and across the heartland Midwest.

Now what was the guts of that infamous quote? 

... It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them. ...

Wow. Times sure have changed.

It's good to see that all of those cultural warfare issues have faded into the background, far from the headlines. Especially in places like Texas.

Oh wait. There is this rather epic headline at The Washington Post right now:

‘Straight into the paper shredder:’ Texans the first to decry Obama’s schools directive about transgender bathrooms

OK, journalists, make that God, guns, gays and gender (as in clinging to biologically based concepts of gender).

Now, this latest lighting strike of executive privilege had not come down from on high when we record this week's Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in). But we did talk about the great and very unique state of Texas and that recent attempt at The New York Times to explain Texas to the rest of America.


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At United Methodist conference, media highlight LGBT issues yet again

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The United Methodist Church's quadrennial conference opened this week, and once again, mainstream media are making it mainly into an LGBT debate. As the largest mainline Protestant body that doesn't ordain gays or perform weddings for them, the UMC has faced growing pressure over the last three decades.

Much of the coverage thus far has been restrained and respectful, but subtle word choices favoring the LGBT side often creep in. And as the 10-day conference in Portland, Ore., continues, we can expect more of the same.

A good example is the Religion News Service, which yesterday reported on the assembly turning back a proposal to send gay matters to small groups for discussion. RNS gives some space to a statesmanlike quote by a top UMC official:

The tension over LGBT inclusion during the meeting, which draws delegates from across the globe, was evident from the beginning. In a sermon at the conference’s opening worship, Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr., president of the Council of Bishops, reminded delegates: "As we discuss our different opinions about same-gender relationships, may we remember our dueling points of view are anchored in our desire to be faithful.
"We hold our respective positions as firmly as our conscience and experience dictates, but can we not also seek the path of unity among Christians with different views on this issue as we have on other disputed matters?"

The general tone of the article is respectful of both sides like that. But it twice uses the concept of the "inclusion" of LGBT people in the denomination.  They are not, in fact, excluded; as the group's Book of Discipline says, all persons have "sacred worth" and may "attend its worship services, participate in its programs, receive the sacraments, upon baptism be admitted as baptized members, and upon taking vows declaring the Christian faith, become professing members in any local church in the connection." But the book also classifies homosexual practice as "incompatible with Christian teaching."


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Deaconesses or female deacons? Journalists do you know the history of these terms?

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Once again, it is time to play that popular news-media game, "What did Pope Francis say and what might it mean?" The goal is to fit a bite or two of church history into the rapid-fire and breathless responses of journalists in some elite newsrooms, where a papal call for clarification on female deacons is being hailed as a possible door to the ordination of women as priests. 

Let's start with some basics: The word used in Romans 16:1 to describe the woman named Phoebe is diakonos -- which some have translated as "servant," while others use "deacon. In the New International Version, that would be:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae.

In the classic King James Version, that reads: 

I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea.

Scan through this Bible Hub search and you'll see a variety of translations that go each way. But we can start our discussion with an acknowledgement that the early church did include some kind of role for women known as "deaconesses." 

Now, we also need to recognize that in the modern world, a rapidly rising number of Catholic parishes and ministries are featuring the ministry of men ordained as "permanent deacons," as opposed to deacons who will soon transition into the priesthood. This is a very newsworthy trend.

So, when you clicked on your news source of choice (or perhaps even opened a newspaper) today, did the story you read contain some material resembling the following from the report in Crux?

Currently, canon 1024 of the Code of Canon Law says that only a baptized male can receive the sacrament of ordination, so the law does not presently permit female deacons. The question, however, especially in light of the Biblical evidence for women being referred to as “deaconesses” in early Christianity, is whether that law could be changed.


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Seventh-day Adventist college fracas proves that local coverage is often better

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Every week, yet another Christian college is in an uproar over clashes between doctrine and 21st century culture.

Thus, it’s no great surprise that one of North America’s 13 Seventh-day Adventist schools should be on stage now. The focus is on Pacific Union College, a Napa Valley institution ranked as America’s most beautiful college in 2012 by the Daily Beast and Newsweek. That is pretty amazing when you consider it was up against the University of California-Santa Barbara and Pepperdine.

However, its psychology department is in much disarray, according to a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education that tells of the department’s decision to invite Ryan Bell to speak. GR’s own Bobby Ross has written quite a bit about the publicity-seeking Mr. Bell who has gotten lots of favorable coverage for his recent decision to dump his Christian faith and become an atheist.

Even though Bell is a PUC alum, it’s not hard to imagine how inviting him onto campus would set the collective teeth of college administrators on edge.

 After forcing a psychology professor to disinvite a controversial speaker, Pacific Union College is, for the second time in less than three years, facing turmoil within and departures from its department of psychology and social work, along with renewed questions about its commitment to academic freedom.
The latest uproar at the institution, a small Seventh-day Adventist liberal-arts college in California, began when Aubyn S. Fulton, a professor of psychology, invited Ryan Bell, a former pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church who had become an atheist, to speak at a colloquium.


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God ignored? What a newspaper story on a baseball player with a new heart didn't say

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Here at GetReligion, we talk a lot about holy ghosts.

On Day 1 of this journalism-focused website, Terry Mattingly explained the meaning of that term:

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.
They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.
One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.
A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don’t. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don’t get to see them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Most of the time, we witness holy ghosts from afar. We don't know what happened behind the scenes. We can't say for certain whether a reporter missed an obvious religion angle or chose to ignore it.

But recently, my full-time role as chief correspondent for The Christian Chronicle overlapped with my part-time GetReligion gig and gave me an up-close view of holy ghosts. 


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