Books

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This weekend 'think piece' is not about l'affaire Christianity Today: Please read it anyway

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Believe it or not, I had already selected a Dallas Morning News essay by Baylor University historian Thomas about evangelicals and politics as this weekend’s “think piece” before l’affaire Christianity Today rocked the chattering classes that live on Twitter.

The double-decker headline proclaims, “When political pollsters talk about ‘evangelicals,’ they aren’t talking about all of us: The evangelical leaders whom the president cites are actually a small group.”

Kidd has been everywhere in recent weeks, with due cause, because of his new Yale University Press book: “Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.”

Somebody, somewhere, really needs to buy a truckload this book and distribute copies to every journalist in America (and maybe the world) who plans to cover the 2020 White House race. And not just because of Trump! There are crucial “evangelical” plot lines unfolding linked to African-American evangelicals (ask Mayor Pete Buttigieg) and the growing number of evangelical Latinos (think suburban voters in Florida).

But, wait, is the word “evangelical” a political term? Here is a bite from a recent column I did on Kidd’s work:

Some journalists and pollsters are now operating on the assumption that white evangelicals are the only evangelicals that matter, noted Kidd. … A few have, however, started to realize that many Americans who self-identify as "evangelicals" are not walking the talk. 

That has been common knowledge since the late 1970s, when Gallup researchers began asking hard questions about religious beliefs and the practice of those beliefs in daily life. Gallup cut its estimate that "evangelicals" were 34% of America's population to 18% – a number that would shock many journalists, as well as GOP activists.

"Evangelicals are covered, they are important, when they are a factor in politics — period," said Kidd.


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Thinking about St. Benedict: Emma Green looks at one extreme option in Kansas

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Several years ago, I took a copy of The Atlantic Monthly with me on a non-stop flight from Baltimore to the Los Angeles area. I was still reading it when the plane landed on the West Coast. And that was before Emma Green arrived.

As I have stated before here at GetReligion, Green’s work is magazine-style analysis, yet she is also doing hard reporting as part of that mix — reporting that often drives hard-news beat reporters to have to consider expanding their sources and the points of view included in their work. At times, it seems like we could feature Green in this “think piece” slot every weekend.

This time around, she headed to a state that I am beginning to frequent for family reasons. Kansas is not for everyone, but it is an interesting and unique culture — a real place. It’s as far south and west as you can go and still be in the Midwest, with it’s strong emphasis on family and community. How many public parks are there in Wichita? (The answer is 144.)

Here is the headline on Green’s new piece:

The Christian Withdrawal Experiment

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

The big idea, of course, is that these believers are withdrawing, as much as is possible in this hyperlinked world, from one culture in order to defend another. At the heart of it all is faith and family.

But is this specific community the emerging norm? Here is the overture:


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Thinking with N.T. Wright and Ryan Burge: Let's talk specifics of that 'evangelical' crisis

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If you follow top-tier American media, you know that retired Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright is in the news right now. This is the kind of thing that happens when British intellectuals come to the United States to promote their new books.

Wright is a theologian known around the world as an apologist for a traditional, ecumenical brand of Christianity, to the point that some have said that his pew-level apologetics can be compared with C.S. Lewis.So what’s are the hot topics for Wright, as he tours in support of his new book, “The New Testament in Its World”?

Wait for it.

Well, have you heard that 81% of white evangelicals in American just love Donald Trump? And that American evangelicalism is in a state of crisis?With all of that in mind, let’s make this an N.T. Wright weekend, with some “think piece” input from two religion-beat professionals who will be ultra-familiar to GetReligion readers — Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post and Emma Green of The Atlantic.

So Bailey’s breakfast Q&A ran with this headline: “ ‘A wakeup call:’ British theologian N.T. Wright on the prosperity gospel, climate change and Advent.” Here’s a sample:

Q: How do you compare Brexit and Trump, and how British Christians understand American evangelical support for Trump?

A: The same sort of movement propelled both events. With Brexit, we did not see the white evangelical support Trump had. The churches are probably divided. They’re probably mostly Remainers [who wanted Britain to remain in the European Union].

In Britain, the word “evangelical” doesn’t mean what it means in America.


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If there's a U.S. evangelical 'crisis', who are the 'evangelicals' that journalists are talking about?

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If there's a U.S. evangelical 'crisis', who are the 'evangelicals' that journalists are talking about?

Commentators who were respected, card-carrying evangelical Protestants as of June 16, 2015 (when Donald Trump announced) are saying their movement faces a “crisis” and its very name should be shelved as too politicized, at least in the U.S. A few celebrities unite with multitudes of grass-roots voters in linking evangelicalism with the Donald Trump-ified Republican Party.

Yet there are many non-partisan leaders like the Rev. Leith Anderson, who’s retiring after 13 years as president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). He tells the savvy Adelle Banks of RNS that “I want the standard to be what the Bible teaches, not what the polls report.”

The media won’t be dumping the E-word any time soon. But amid the confusion and rancor, we do need to know what we’re talking about. Thus the value of the new Eerdmans paperback ”Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be.” This anthology of old and new articles was compiled by expert historians David Bebbington of Britain and Americans George Marsden and Mark Noll.

Self-identified evangelicals form the largest U.S. religious bloc, and the book has three potential uses for journalists. First, it could focus an analytical article. Second, it offers fine introductory background for writers who are new to this terrain. Third, those who already know a lot will learn some things.

Making definitions difficult, this fluid movement crosses denominational lines and combines formal church bodies, myriad independent congregations, “parachurch” agencies, traveling personalities, media, music and more. Some folks accurately labeled “evangelical” have other primary identities. And don’t forget the minority evangelical factions within pluralistic “mainline” Protestant denominations.

Look at things this way: Groups in councils of churches and the like have shared organizations without shared belief. Evangelicalism has shared belief without a shared organization. In defining such a loose phenomenon, journalists will be reminded of Justice Potter Stewart’s remark on pornography. “I know it when I see it.”


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New Testament texts were handed down across centuries, so are they reliable?

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THE QUESTION:

Can we rely upon New Testament texts that were copied and recopied over centuries?

THE GUY’S ANSWER:

It’s hard to think of any question more central for the Christian faith than that. The Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and subsequent catechism proclaim that the New Testament books provide “the ultimate truth of God’s revelation.” The church “unhesitatingly affirms” that they “faithfully hand on” the “honest truth about Jesus” and the history of his words and deeds.

Yet consider this. If people were to be asked what’s their favorite saying of Jesus Christ, many would certainly choose his words while being executed upon the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” Luke 23:34). Equally cherished is his admonition to the mob preparing to stone to death an adulterous woman: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7).

Careful Bible readers will note that most Bible versions on sale today, including those produced by conservative evangelicals, have footnotes stating in all candor that those two sayings are absent in early and widely recognized Gospel manuscripts in the original Greek language. That does not prove the sayings are not authentic but that it’s possible or likely they weren’t in the two Gospels as originally written.

The familiar King James (Protestant) and Douay-Rheims (Catholic) translations from centuries ago raise no such questions. But today’s Bibles note such findings from modern-day scholarship in the highly technical field of  “textual criticism,” which seeks to get us as close to the original writings as possible. The fact we have around 5,300 surviving manuscripts and fragments, a few of them quite early (vastly more evidence than with other 1st Century writings), means experts must evaluate and choose from many variations.

This situation led to doubts about New Testament credibility from a respected textual critic, Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, in a scholarly work, “The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture” (1993).


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Rolling Stone skips Marianne Williamson's ideas and focuses on money, money, money

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The headline and deck of Tess Stuart’s report on Marianne Williamson — “That Marianne Mind$et: Obeying the Law of Divine Compensation” — tell you nearly everything you need to know about this one-trick pony of a profile in Rolling Stone. Stuart has latched onto one of the easiest clichés of politics (They’re all in it for the money) and turned it into a unified theory of everything, or at least of everything about Williamson.

There was a time when a Rolling Stone writer would have made the effort to understand the worldview behind a person who speaks of miracles and transformation, but that was more than 10 years ago, back when it published Janet Reitman’s “Inside Scientology.”

It’s so much easier now to compare Williamson’s New Thought response to Hurricane Dorian to a prayer offered by a chaplain during a governor’s press conference, as though they are equally ridiculous:

Yet, at other points, it does feel like Williamson is getting something of a raw deal. A week after we met, as Hurricane Dorian was crawling across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida, Williamson wanted to help. She tweeted, in an attempt to marshal her then-2.76 million followers, “Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

She was mercilessly ridiculed for the sentiment — so badly that Williamson ultimately ended up deleting the tweet.

Although it wasn’t the official end of Williamson’s campaign, it might have been the functional end: the last time she made national news. There was relatively little notice, by contrast, when Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, opened a press conference about the state’s emergency preparations for Hurricane Dorian with a prayer from an Army Corps of Engineers chaplain, who said, “God, we know that you’re able to turn a storm. You’re able to say to that storm: Peace, be still. We give you glory now, and in your name we pray. Amen.” You could say that man was asking God for a miracle, but no one made fun of him for it.


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Reporters' reminders: (1) Two stories can be one story, so (2) watch religious media for ideas

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Reporters' reminders: (1) Two stories can be one story, so (2) watch religious media for ideas

The following is an example of how two separate stories can be analyzed as one story. It also demonstrates why the complete religion reporter working in the mainstream Media will continually look for material in specialized news outlets.

Story #1, which The Guy depicted April 4, is the demise of the once mighty Christian Booksellers Association, founded in 1950 at the beginning of the post-war evangelical boom and lately a victim of the woes hitting all brick-and-mortar retail. (The group was later renamed CBA: The Association for Christian Retail, to signify that members sold much more than books).

Story #2, which hit almost simultaneously, is the financial peril and potential collapse of what has been an equally prominent organization, National Religious Broadcasters, formed in 1944.

Writers can learn all the sorry details from a June 20 exploration on the website of freelance writer Julia Roys, a Nov. 6 follow-up for the watchdog group Ministry Watch by beat veteran Steve Rabey, and a rundown in the Sept. 28 issue of World magazine, which commendably has an investigative reporting team run by the author, Michael Reneau.

All three articles raise an important and related question journalists might pursue separately: In light of the NRB situation, can donors rely much on certification by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability?

Now, why does The Guy propose that the troubles of CBA and NRB be treated as a single story?

Despite their non-sectarian names, both organizations are thoroughly evangelical Protestant, and together have been key players in that U.S. movement in the same way for decades. Their two bustling trade shows each year were all-important for networking, shaping the subculture, promoting popular theologies and showcasing stars old and new.

Both were especially vital for the complex world of “parachurch” ministries, which lack the interconnections provided by denominations. The broadcasters’ group, whose meetings drew notables from U.S. presidents on down, also played a role in lobbying government on behalf of media interests.


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Words of the dying when on the threshold: What are these people talking about?

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Linguist Michael Erard, a regular contributor to The Atlantic, shows a remarkable talent for writing on academic questions in a style unencumbered by the academy’s jargon. “What People Actually Say Before They Die,” which he wrote at the beginning of this year, appeared on the longform buffet again recently, courtesy of the curators of the Mozilla-owned Pocket.

The gratuitous use of actually in the headline alludes to the cultural hunger for famous last words that sound too much like sound bites or aphorisms to seem quite believable. Pithy sentences attributed to the dying, Erard writes, “are the cornerstone of a romantic vision of death — one that falsely promises a final burst of lucidity and meaning before a person passes.”

I find Erard’s piece especially significant because he stares into a phenomenon every person will face, usually in the order of being present with a loved one who is dying and later becoming the person who dies.

Erard’s article opens with the story of Mort Felix, a lifelong atheist who joked about his plans for an upbeat death but found a more harrowing experience during three painful weeks in 2002. Lisa Smartt, his daughter, took extensive notes on what Felix said during his final weeks, and later wrote “Words on the Threshold: What We Say as We’re Nearing Death" (New World Library, 2017).

Erard writes about Smartt’s work:

One common pattern she noted was that when her father, Felix, used pronouns such as it and this, they didn’t clearly refer to anything. One time he said, “I want to pull these down to earth somehow … I really don’t know … no more earth binding.” What did these refer to? His sense of his body in space seemed to be shifting. “I got to go down there. I have to go down,” he said, even though there was nothing below him.

He also repeated words and phrases, often ones that made no sense. “The green dimension! The green dimension!” (Repetition is common in the speech of people with dementia and also those who are delirious.) Smartt found that repetitions often expressed themes such as gratitude and resistance to death. But there were also unexpected motifs, such as circles, numbers, and motion. “I’ve got to get off, get off! Off of this life,” Felix had said.


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Major survey of U.S. young adults has startling data on Protestants' two-party system

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The Religion Guy confesses that, like so many writers, he has tended to depict U.S. Protestantism’s two-party system of “Mainline” vs. “Evangelical” mostly in terms of newsworthy LGBTQ issues. In more sophisticated moments, he might briefly note the underlying differences on Bible interpretation. But maybe something even more basic is occurring.

While scanning an important new research work, “The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular lives of American Young Adults” (Oxford), The Guy was gobsmacked by a graph on page 32.

You want news?

How about the prospect that U.S. Protestantism does not just involve that familiar biblical rivalry but could be evolving toward a future with two starkly different belief systems.

All U.S. religion writers and church strategists are anxiously watching the younger generation, and there’s been important research both here (care of Princeton University Press), here (make that Oxford University Press) and finally here (Oxford, again).

The project published as “The Twentysomething Soul,” led by authors Tim Clydesdale (sociology, College of New Jersey, clydesda@tcnj.edu) and Kathleen Garces-Foley (religious studies, Marymount University, kgarcesfoley@marymount.edu), surveyed an unusually large sample of Americans ages 20 to 30 and could fully categorize religious identifications, beliefs and practices.

The graph that grabbed The Guy involved who God is.

In this question’s option one, he is “a personal being, involved in the lives of people today.” Hard to think of a Christian belief more basic than that. In other options, God is “not personal, but something like a cosmic life force,” a fuzzy New Age-ish idea. Or God only created the world “but is not involved in the world now,” what’s known as Deism. Or the respondent lacked any sort of belief in God.


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