Books

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America remains bitterly divided: But is this country veering closer to another civil war?

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America remains bitterly divided: But is this country veering closer to another civil war?

Call it the "Texit" parable.

America's new civil war begins with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, creating an abortion-free zone in the Bible Belt and most heartland states.

Enraged Democrats pledge to end the U.S. Senate filibuster and expand the number of high-court justices. After restoring Roe, they seek single-payer health care, strict gun control and sweeping changes in how government agencies approach the First Amendment, with the IRS warning faith groups to evolve -- or else -- on matters of sexual identity. Big Tech begins enforcing the new orthodoxy.

Conservatives rebel and liberals soon realize that most of America's military, including nuclear weapons, are in rebel territory. Then federal agents kill Alabama's pro-life, Black governor -- while trying to arrest him as a traitor. That's too much for Gov. Francisco Gonzalez of Texas, who decides that it's time for a new republic.

David French fine-tuned this "Texit" vision early in 2020, while finishing "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation." Best-known as a #NeverTrump conservative pundit, most of the Harvard Law graduate's career has focused on old-school First Amendment liberalism -- which in recent decades has meant defending conservative religious believers in religious liberty cases.

The book's first lines are sobering, especially after recent scenes on Capitol Hill.

"It's time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed," wrote French. Right now, "there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart."

Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture. America remains the developing world's most religious nation, yet its increasingly secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most traditional religious believers live in another. In politics, more and more Democrats are Democrats simply because they hate Republicans, and vice versa.

Ironically, cultural conservatives now find themselves hoping that the Supreme Court will protect them, said French, reached by telephone. Conservatives know they have lost Hollywood, academia, America's biggest corporations, the White House and both houses of Congress.

"I constructed the Texit scenario around court packing because that has become their last firewall," said French.


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Courage vs. civility? It doesn't help when believers join mobs in social media

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Courage vs. civility? It doesn't help when believers join mobs in social media

It seemed that whenever the Rev. Daniel Darling ventured into social media, he saw the same red flags -- so he posted a commentary on "Christians and Conspiracy Theories."

"Because it's online, doesn't mean it's true," he noted. "Because a story is advanced by someone whose ideology I agree with, doesn't mean it's true. …

"For some reason, we are a people who want to believe there is a big plot behind every single thing that happens. … If you watch enough cable TV, depending on your political persuasion, you will come to think that behind every act in Congress there is a string of connected dots that go back to either George Soros (liberal) or the Koch brothers (conservative)."

This wasn't a hot take on QAnon letters or rumors of shredded Georgia ballots.

Darling wrote those words a decade ago, while leading an evangelical church near Chicago. Now he's a crucial voice for the National Religious Broadcasters and author of a book -- "A Way with Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good" -- pleading for believers to think twice about their online lives.

"I'm not saying we should run away and hide," said Darling, in a telephone interview. "There's no way to avoid the fact that social media is a crucial part of American life. I don't think Christians have any choice about whether or not to be engaged. …

"What we need to do is be more careful when deciding where to draw lines and take stands. But, unless you're Amish, I don't see anyone sitting this one out."

It's especially important for religious leaders to warn their followers not to join the online "mobs" that are destroying America's ability to have sane public debates. In some cases, digital attacks are also threatening lives and reputations.

Consider, for example, the woke social-media attacks that fueled inaccurate mainstream news reports about Covington Catholic High School students at the 2019 March for Life. Then there were the conservative social-media warriors who embraced #pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming that prominent Democrats were linked to a global child-trafficking ring.

Did Russia steal the White House in 2016? Yes, there were mainstream-news reports. Did China, Cuba, Venezuela or some other evil force steal the 2020 election? Yes, there have been headlines on the other side of America's partisan media wars.

The result is anger and pain that has reached many pews and some pulpits.


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Want to see scholars fight? Ask if the book of Isaiah mentions a 'virgin birth'

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THE QUESTION:

Should Bibles speak of a “virgin” birth in Isaiah 7:14?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

No less than 38 U.S. orchestras featured Handel’s “Messiah” in annual Christmas concerts during the 2015-16 season, making it “the runaway most-performed work,” according to a Baltimore Symphony survey. The beloved 1741 oratorio about Jesus Christ is also perhaps the most-performed piece across all of musical history — if we exclude “Happy Birthday to You.”

In this COVID Christmas, audiences must make do without live performances, but they may recall Handel’s setting for one of the Bible’s most-debated verses: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,” from Isaiah 7:14. This Old Testament verse is quoted in the New Testament’s Matthew 1:23 as foretelling Jesus’s birth to the Virgin Mary.

In Isaiah’s account, the Southern Kingdom of Judah based in Jerusalem faced military peril from an alliance the rival Northern Kingdom of Israel forged with Syria. Through the prophet Isaiah, God reassured Judah’s faithless King Ahaz that the kingdom of David would survive, giving the “sign” that the woman’s newborn son would be named Immanuel, meaning “God is with us.”

Verse 16 then proclaims that before this boy would be old enough to tell right from wrong, Judah’s enemies would fall. That indicates the prophecy applied literally or symbolically to a birth in Isaiah’s own time, possibly the prophet’s own son although Scripture never specifies who it was. In Christians’ “double meaning” interpretation, this prophecy applied both to Isaiah’s day and the coming of Jesus Christ seven centuries later.

(In addition to Matthew, the separate New Testament tradition in Luke 1:26-35 also reports that Jesus was born of a virgin, without quoting Isaiah.)

However, is “virgin” the right translation of the Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14?


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Thinking with Ryan Burge: Like it or not, 'evangelicals' are not fading away in American life

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Hey journalists: How many stories have your read (or for some of us, written) in the past quarter century or more about how “evangelicals” and/or the Religious Right is fading and the religious left on the rise?

Those topics often go together, for some reason, and this topic is one of those evergreen themes in coverage linked to religion and politics.

The reality is much more complex. I have found that the problem, from the point of view of editors, is that there is more to this subject than politics. Do dig into the complex realities here, one needs to discuss all kinds of icky things — like doctrine, race, birth rates, evangelism and post-denominationalism. Who wants to do that?

Meanwhile, there is the whole complicated church-history question about the definition of the term “evangelism.” Believe it or not, this is not a political term. It you want to read more on that topic, including Billy Graham’s attempt to offer a destination, click here (“Define ‘evangelical’ — please”), or here (“Define ‘evangelical’ — again”), or here (“Define ‘evangelical’ — 2013 edition”) or here (“Define ‘evangelical,’ please — 2019 edition”).

I bring this up because I have been collecting another blast of essential Ryan Burge tweets (there are so many from this guy) related to this topic.

Journalists and religion-news aficionados also need to check out this post at the Religion in Public blog that is his online home base: “The Evangelical Brand is Not as Tarnished As Most People Think.”

There is so much to talk about here. I mean, check out the chart at the top of this post. I mean, don’t you want to know more about the 13% of Orthodox Jews who self-identify as “evangelical” or “born again”? How about the 1% of atheists in that niche?

This post is all about the charts. But still, here is a crucial thesis statement from the Burge “evangelical brand” post:


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At last, it's time for reporters to look abroad, with decline of Islam in Iran a brewing story

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Enough with U.S. politics and punditry. How about more news-media reportage on major developments abroad?

One top hot spot in the coming Joe Biden era is Iran, with the regime's intensified rivalry with Arab neighbors led by Saudi Arabia, ongoing hatred toward a supposedly satanic United States and ambitious pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Journalists give far less notice to Iran's religious situation, perhaps because they tend to emphasize Islam's dominant Sunni branch more than the minority Shi'ism that became Persia's official faith in 1501, and because we assume rigid theocracy is frozen in place and that's that.

But what if the religo-political rule so famously imposed in 1979 upon this large and pivotal land has lost so much public respect that we see "the near collapse of official Iranian Islam"? That startling quote comes from Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins in a column for The Christian Century. If true, that's a huge story just waiting for thorough examination through interviews with stateside experts or, for media so equipped, on-the-ground coverage.

The new edition of the authoritative World Christian Encyclopedia says its sources report that starting around 2002, Iran's Islamic rule has inspired the quiet spread of small underground Christian fellowships with thousands involved -- some say a million -- despite the fact that those forsaking Islam face prison, even death. This has been discussed in niche Christian circles online, but that’s about it.

Jenkins is iffy on the extent of Christian growth, since hard evidence is lacking, but is confident about Islam's collapse due to an important opinion survey in Iran last summer by a Dutch organization.

What is happening? Only 78% of the Iranians sampled believe in God in any sense, and just 32% consider themselves to be Shi'a Muslims any longer. A mere one-fourth expect the coming Imam Mahdi (messiah), a fundamental tenet of Shi'ism.

"The vast majority of mosques are all but abandoned, even during great celebrations" on the Islamic calendar, Jenkins reports.

His sardonic comment: "Forty years of ruthless theocracy will do that to a country."


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Parts of pope's new book may be woke, but news coverage hasn't told the whole story

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While most of you were either shopping for your Thanksgiving meal or preparing it, Pope Francis was busy promoting his new book.

To be fair, the pontiff wasn’t doing exactly that in the same way as other authors, who typically make TV appearances and do book signings at your local bookstore.

Instead, the pope was getting the word out in other ways. The book, titled Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, was excerpted in the Italian daily La Repubblica, a left-wing newspaper not shy about highlighting the pope’s more woke leanings over the past few years.

The excerpt earned widespread media coverage and praise. The Associated Press, in its Nov. 23 news account after attaining an advance copy, ran with the headline: “Pope book backs George Floyd protests, blasts virus skeptic.”

The key to this story is that this book comes at a time when the Catholic church is deeply divided along doctrinal and political lines. How was this issue handled? Here’s how the story opens:

Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown.

In “Let Us Dream,” Francis also criticizes populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of “rigid” conservative Catholics who support them. But he also criticizes the forceful downing of historic statues during protests for racial equality this year as a misguided attempt to “purify the past.”

The 150-page book, due out Dec. 1, was ghost-written by Francis’ English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, and at times the prose and emphasis seems almost more Ivereigh’s than Francis.’ That’s somewhat intentional — Ivereigh said Monday he hopes a more colloquial English-speaking pope will resonate with English-speaking readers and believers.

At its core, “Let Us Dream” aims to outline Francis’ vision of a more economically and environmentally just post-coronavirus world where the poor, the elderly and weak aren’t left on the margins and the wealthy aren’t consumed only with profits.

It should be noted that the news story deals mostly with Floyd and the pandemic because the press release issued by Simon & Schuster to go with the book that was made available to reporters and reviewers highlighted those sections.

In other words, the press office there knew how to preach to the choir.


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Thinking about Thanksgiving and beyond: Always coronavirus winter, but never Christmas?

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I am very sorry, but I need to talk about the Baby Boomers.

Trust me, I know that Americans are tired of hearing about the 73 million or so Baby Boomers. I know this is true because I am a Boomer and I’m tired of hearing about us. As a 66-year-old gravity challenged male with asthma, it seems like every time I turn on the television there is an advertisement about some medication that I may or may not need — soon.

Then there is the coronavirus pandemic and that pushy #BoomerRemover trend in social media. However, it’s certainly true that millions of Boomers fall into multiple COVID-19 risk categories.

This brings me to a sobering think piece that ran the other day in the New York Times by former ABC News religion correspondent Peggy Wehmeyer, whose byline will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.

On one level, this was a piece about Thanksgiving. But it also points forward into the entire holiday season, underlining many of the painful choices facing Baby Boomer grandparents, their children and, yes, their grandchildren. Here’s the double-decker headline:

‘Gram, Are You Sad?’ This Year, We’re Spending the Holidays Alone

None of our grandchildren will be at our table for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But the pandemic winter still leaves room for the imagination.

Yes, there are valid news stories hiding in this piece and some of them are linked both to religious rites and to family traditions that, for millions, are linked to religious seasons. For starters, what will happen to Midnight Mass? In my own tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, what happens to those glorious meals breaking the Nativity Fast?

Wehmeyer turned to the fiction of C.S. Lewis for a powerful image for what is ahead and what millions of people will be feeling in the weeks ahead. Emotions will really be running high during the Christian season of Christmas, which begins on Dec. 25th and runs for 12 days.


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This week's podcast: It isn't 'fake news' to recognize that America remains a divided land

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This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was rather unusual. Instead of focusing on a specific bite of news, or a topic drawing coverage, host Todd Wilken and I spent most of our time discussing a new survey that I truly believe is worthy of coverage.

A key element of this study is the role that “fake news” plays in cleaving America into two warring cultures. However, that omnipresent term really isn’t defined. Apparently, when Americans think about “fake news” we are rather like U.S. Supreme Court justices contemplating pornography — they know it when they see it. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The key is that “fake news” has become the fightin’ word attached to the many ways in which a rising tide of advocacy media is tearing apart the foundation of American public discourse.

Here at GetReligion, we think that there is more to this than mere political bias. For decades, many — not all — American journalists have struggled to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of religious, moral and cultural issues (think “Kellerism”). This trend has now spread into other parts of American life, leaving far too many citizens, on left and right, locked inside concrete news and entertainment silos. For many citizens, the next step is to embrace conspiracy theories or even dangerous forms of rebellion.

All of these themes show up in the new study, “Democracy in Dark Times,” which is the 2020 edition of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s Survey of American Political Culture series. The team that produced it includes a scholar, sociologist James Davison Hunter, whose works — “Culture Wars,” for example — will be familiar to many GetReligion readers.

Think of it this way: This man wrote a book in 1994, a quarter of a century ago, entitled “Before the Shooting Begins.”

The new study, using terms central to Hunter’s book “To Change the World,” seeks to “understand not just the political weather, but the cultural climate shaping the election as well.” Here is a crucial passage — long, but essential — on the role advocacy media is playing:

The American public’s deep misgivings toward governmental and economic institutions extends to a suspicion of the media. Just over two-thirds (68%) of all Americans agree that “you can’t believe much of what you hear from the mainstream media,” and just under two-thirds (63%) believe that “media distortions and fake news” are a very or extremely serious threat to America.


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New York Times went tone deaf when Matthew McConaughey started talking about God

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Let’s see. I feel an urgent need, right now, to write about news coverage that has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

There is, you see, a side of my journalism personality linked to those long-ago days when I was an entertainment reporter-rock columnist. Also, when I taught at a seminary, I spent most of my time trying to get future pastors, religious educators and counselors to realize that, for ordinary Americans, “signals” sent via entertainment matter way more than those in news content. That’s tragic, but true.

So let’s flashback to that New York Times feature that ran not so long ago under this headline: “Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey.” Let’s skip the second deck of that headline since it contained the obligatory reference to “all right, all right, all right (or in Texan, that would be '“alright” or some other spelling with an extra “w” or “h” in there somewhere).”

I was curious if this book — or perhaps I should say this Times feature about the book — would make any references to this complex superstar’s take on Christian faith. Maybe a reference to his infamous, by Hollywood standards, Oscar acceptance speech in 2014? You remember, when he said:

First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.’ “

There was more, but we’ll leave it at that. It was kind of a short “Pilgrim’s Progress” with his trademark twang.

The Times feature does use the safe b-word — “beliefs” — but doesn’t seem very interested in the who, what, when, where, why and how. Thus, readers are told:

... McConaughey wants readers to look beyond the boldface name on its cover and focus on its fundamental message. No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.”


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