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Top trends of 2022? There are plenty of political and religion stories in these tweets

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Top trends of 2022? There are plenty of political and religion stories in these tweets

It’s certainly been a volatile year on social media (#DUH).

Twitter is my platform of choice. It does exactly what I need it to do because it’s such a visual medium.

Post a graph. Write 50 or 60 words and then wait a few minutes to see what happens.

In many ways, it’s the antithesis of what it means to be an academic. We are taught to qualify every statement, to never engage in hyperbole, to use 1,000 words when 500 would do. Twitter has been teaching me over the last five years about how to visualize data in the simplest manner possible. It’s taught me that if the average reader can’t understand the point I’m trying to make in 280 characters, then it’s probably not worth making.

Then, Elon Musk bought the whole company. I can’t say that I agree with every decision that he is making in steering the Blue Bird Site, but I honestly don’t have a great alternative. So, I will go down with the ship, I suppose.

But, the end of the year always offers a nice opportunity to pause and reflect on what “worked” on Twitter. Out of the nearly 1,400 tweets I sent this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to catalog the five tweets that got the most retweets in 2022. Here they are in reverse order.

5. Education and Religion

I swear I could post a variation of this one once a month and it would get a ton of attention. It’s a really simple bit of analysis, to be honest.

The conclusion is straightforward and widely known among quantitative scholars of American religion. Folks with a higher level of education are more likely to align with a religious tradition and less likely to say that they are a religious “none.”

This reality replicates in every dataset that I’ve ever seen. Yet, it comes as an absolute shock to people on Twitter. Why is that? Any thoughts?


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New podcast: What kinds of Catholic fears are hiding in these Latin Mass wars?

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New podcast: What kinds of Catholic fears are hiding in these Latin Mass wars?

Over the past 40 years or so, I have learned this lesson: If you are covering a controversial story and you find a key point where an activist or two in the clashing armies agree with one another, that’s probably something worth noting.

That happened this week while reading a couple of thousand words of commentary about the decision by Pope Francis to all but crush some of the growing communities of priests and traditional Catholics who choose to celebrate the old Latin Mass. To catch up on that, see: “'Where there is incense there is fire.' True, but reporters can seek voices in middle of that war.” And check out this one, too: “Ties that bind? Concerning journalism, Grindr, secrecy, homophobia and the Latin Mass.”

While recording this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to check that out), I read two quotations — one from the Catholic right and one from the left. They offer two completely different takes on what’s happening in the Latin Mass wars, except that they seem to agree on one crucial reality.

The goal is to spot that common ground. Ready?

Quote No. 1 comes from conservative Amy Welborn, writing at her “Charlotte was Both” weblog:

Let’s do an Occam’s Razor on this new Motu Proprio.

It seems pretty simple to me: A number of bishops wanted the tools to restrict celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, and Pope Francis gave it to them.

There you go.

I mean, we can talk history, ecclesiology, theology and liturgy all day long, but that’s about as basic as it gets or needs to be. I was there. Well, not literally, but I can tell you that this generation of clergy and church activists – now maybe from their late 60’s on up – were formed in a way that they cannot envision a healthy Church in which the TLM is still a part. At all.

What we see here is a papacy, backed by strategically placed cardinals loyal to this pope, that:

… in words, emphasizes synodality, accompaniment, listening, dialogue outreach to the margins and consistently condemns “clericalism” — has issued a document that embodies a rigid approach to the issue, and then restricts, limits and directs more power, ultimately, to Rome. And shows no evidence of actually “listening” to anyone except bishops who are annoyed by the TLM and TLM adherents who conveniently fit the “divisive” narrative.

Now, let’s contrast and compare that view of the conflict with the contents of quote No. 2.


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This is a story: Aging Catholic clergy risk health to comfort the faithful during COVID-19 crsis

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Catholic priests are often called into action through tough times. Whether they work in a local parish or as a missionary, the main duties of a priest is to administer the church’s seven sacraments — which include baptism, confession and holy communion — while also visiting the sick, overseeing religious education programs and providing pastoral care to parishioners. Many nuns fill social-service roles, as well.

How does all that work during the COVID-19 pandemic? In Italy, where the coronavirus has led to the infection of some 35,000 residents and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, priests have been among the group hardest hit during this epidemic. Ten priests have already died after contracting COVID-19, more than half of time in the city of Bergamo, just outside Milan. In Bergamo alone, more than 20 priests have been hospitalized, with six of them dead as a result of falling ill. They ranged in age from 59 to 70.

That members of the clergy are suffering in such high numbers isn’t a surprise given the advanced age of so many priests.

This is, after all, an emerging story that is linked to a much older, familiar news story that has been making headlines for several decades — the declining number of young priests in America and many other lands. With fewer young priests, the church depends heavily on the service and skills of aging priests, bishops and nuns.

Here in the United States, where fears about the deadly bug’s spread has grown over the past week, the average age of a priest is 63. The number puts priests in the high-risk bracket for people who can die from contracting COVID-19.

Priestly vocations has been trending downward for years, especially in Europe and the United States. These two places, where the need for clergy to comfort the sick is at its highest while officials call for social distancing, find themselves with no pastoral care. Instead, priests are relegated to streaming services via the Internet as part of social distancing in an effort to stem the outbreak’s growth.

How can priests around the world give pastoral care and comfort to the sick and panic-stricken without putting themselves at risk?


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Is climate change an excuse to not have kids? The New York Times focuses on half of this debate

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Some of you are old enough to remember the 1960s, when books like “The Population Bomb” warned of coming mass starvation if people didn’t stop having kids. And some folks took that warning seriously and decided to forgo childbearing.

Places like China with its brutal, obscene “One Child” policy forced people onto birth control after one child (and aborting any further pregnancies) while none of the predicted famines occurred. 

Fast forward 50 years and while Africa is still booming, demographic drops in places like Japan and Korea are at near-crisis levels; China’s population is aging faster than anywhere else and half the world’s nations have fertility rates below the replacement level of two children per woman. 

Now there’s another reason not to have kids: Climate change. The New York Times tells us why:

It is not an easy time for people to feel hopeful, with the effects of global warming no longer theoretical, projections becoming more dire and governmental action lagging. And while few, if any, studies have examined how large a role climate change plays in people’s childbearing decisions, it loomed large in interviews with more than a dozen people ages 18 to 43.
A 32-year-old who always thought she would have children can no longer justify it to herself. A Mormon has bucked the expectations of her religion by resolving to adopt rather than give birth. An Ohio woman had her first child after an unplanned pregnancy — and then had a second because she did not want her daughter to face an environmental collapse alone.
Among them, there is a sense of being saddled with painful ethical questions that previous generations did not have to confront. Some worry about the quality of life children born today will have as shorelines flood, wildfires rage and extreme weather becomes more common. Others are acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally.

I’m glad they involved someone from a religious background and a Mormon at that, because of Latter-day Saints’ doctrine encouraging large families. Another few paragraphs later:

Parents like Amanda Perry Miller, a Christian youth leader and mother of two in Independence, Ohio, share her fears.


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