One thing is certain, if you follow political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter. You are going to read quite a few things that you agree with and quite a few things with which you will disagree.
Here’s the key to that statement: It really doesn’t matter who “you” are. You can be a liberal mainline Protestant and you will read things that please you and things that infuriate you. Ditto, if you are Southern Baptist Convention leader.
If you are a religious “none,” in Pew Research Center terms, then Burge is mapping your life and beliefs, one chart after another. If you are a nondenominational, independent evangelical/charismatic leader, Burge was one of the first researchers who grasped that your world is now the fastest growing corner of the marketplace of American religion.
Burge makes many Southern Baptists mad. He also makes many Episcopalians and liberal mainliners mad, even though Burge is, himself, a progressive Baptist pastor/thinker as well as a political science professor at a state university. I would imagine, however, that leaders on the right and the left are learning that they are going to have to study the trends shown in all of those Burge charts on Twitter (and in his books).
To be honest with you, I can’t remember when I spotted Burge’s byline and I’m not sharp enough, in terms of computer skills, to spot the oldest item in the nearly 4,000 items that show up in a Google search for “Ryan Burge” and “Terry Mattingly.” I’m guessing 2018 or so. However, Burge has been cooperating with GetReligion for several years now, with me retweeting, oh, hundreds of his tweets with a “Yo. @GetReligion” slug. He also has allowed me to re-publish some of the essays he has written for the Religion in Public weblog (and for Religion Unplugged).
I bring all of this up for two reasons.
(1) Many news consumers who continue to follow legacy media may have seen him featured last night in a “60 Minutes” feature about the Rev. Bart Barber, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
(2) Burge and I recently agreed on the format for a new GetReligion feature that we will call “Do the Math,” in which he will take four or five of his data-backed tweets and then connect them to spotlight trends that journalists need to follow.
Think of it as a data-driven version of the weekly “Memo” features that we’ve been running for years by religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling. The first one will show up in a week or two and we will continue to point readers, with his permission, to his writings at other websites.
As you would expect, Baptist Press noticed the “60 Minutes” feature and, well, offered a slight tweak on one of the key moments in that report. Here is a chunk of that BP report:
60 Minutes turned to Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge for commentary on the actions of the SBC EC in the year’s leading up to the investigation of the alleged mishandling of sexual abuse claims.
“They actually kept a list of over 700 names of people who had been credibly accused. What they said though, is we couldn’t give that to the churches because local churches have autonomy in who they hire and fire for pastors. We can’t tell them they can’t hire this person,” Burge said.
Cooper asked Burge about the actions of the EC.
“Were they calling law enforcement and letting police know that there was a predator at this church in this state?”
“The Executive Committee had the list. Put it in a drawer and didn’t tell anyone about it for over 10 years,” Burge, who is also an American Baptist pastor, responded.
In an edit created by the producers of 60 Minutes, Barber immediately responded, “That’s the mindset that we’re repudiating and moving against.”
Contrary to Burge’s claims, the list was not a secret list of unknown abusers but a collection of news reports about abuse allegations that were already publicly available.
Last May, EC interim counsel Gene Besen pledged to release the list of alleged and convicted abusers collected under former SBC EC executive vice president and general counsel Augie Boto’s direction by an unnamed, former EC staff member. As of August 2018, there were 585 names on the list, Guidepost Solutions revealed in its report. The list was released May 26.
That’s a very fine distinction. As I read it, the SBC’s wire service is arguing that this list’s EXISTENCE was a secret, but that all of the names of the accused predators on the list had, to one degree or another, already been aired in public media.
I asked Burge for his reaction and he emailed back: “It's putting the burden on local churches who are often very small and not very professional to do a ton of background work. When all it would have taken was to just share the master list.”
It’s safe to say lots of Southern Baptists will be discussing that point today.
No surprise here — most of the Anderson Cooper interview focused on Donald Trump, Southern Baptist doctrines on sexuality and more Donald Trump.
Barber rejected Trump in 2016, reluctantly voted for him in 2020 and totally rejected the January 6th riots. That’s a common sequence for White evangelicals in recent years. Cooper also does some subtle editing, when paraphrasing language in the questions and answers, when he switches back and forth between saying that the 2020 election was “stolen,” as opposed to arguing that some elements of that legal election were “rigged” by liberal donors, pollsters, elite journalists, etc.
The big idea, from Barber’s point of view, is that American voters — including White evangelicals — deserve better White House choices than the ones being offered in recent elections by Democrats and Republicans.
Why does this matter? Here’s another large chunk of the “60 Minutes” transcript:
Anderson Cooper: Bart Barber told us that he doesn't believe the election was rigged. He does believe that Joe Biden was duly elected the President of the United States.
Ryan Burge: That's a big deal. 60% of white evangelicals believe the election was stolen in 2020. And many, many Southern Baptists go to church every Sunday believing that. Southern Baptist pastors have been afraid to speak about that from the pulpit, because they know lots of people oppose that in the pews.
Anderson Cooper: How many people, how many voters is -- is Bart Barber in a position to influence?
Ryan Burge: At least 70 million people identify as evangelical today. He can have a huge impact when it comes to who they vote for and why they vote for that candidate.
Ryan Burge says in 2016, evangelicals accounted for 33% of all votes cast for Donald Trump, but Bart Barber's vote was not among them.
Anderson Cooper: In 2016, you said, "I think it hurts the credibility of my testimony for me to be a vocal supporter of a demonstrably evil man whose campaign platform consists mainly of his evilness."
Bart Barber: Yeah. I, I did not vote for President Trump in 2016. And that lays out my rationale for that pretty well.
Anderson Cooper: What was the evilness that you saw?
Bart Barber: The way he treated women that had been documented at that point. Uh, I thought that-- a lot of the rhetoric about immigration was wrongful. A lot of Southern Baptists thought that the rhetoric about immigration was wrongful.
Anderson Cooper: You're talkin' about legal immigration?
Bart Barber: Talkin' about legal immigration.
Anderson Cooper: You embrace it?
Bart Barber: I embrace it. I'm-- I'm thankful for people who have immigrated. I live in Texas. I'm surrounded by people who are intermarried into our families. They make our community better.
Anderson Cooper: Correct me if I'm wrong. In 2020, you did vote for Donald Trump.
Bart Barber: Part of what changed is that, um, the President advocated for some legislation on, uh, sentencing reform, uh, somethin' that really addressed some injustice that affected, uh, minority communities. I was encouraged by the consistent pro-life support that the President gave. I didn't expect that.
Read it all and watch the whole “60 Minutes” feature. And, of course, go to Twitter and follow Burge, if you have not done so already and look for all those “Yo. @GetReligion” tweets from moi.
Stay tuned for “Do the Math” here at GetReligion.
FIRST IMAGE: CBS screen grab from its “60 Minutes” report, featured in social media and elsewhere.