Catholicism

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Thinking with Ryan Burge: Religious faith, moral convictions and obeying the law

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You can learn a lot about protest and civil disobedience by studying this history of religious movements in America and around the world. I did that in college and grad school.

I also learned quite a bit these topics while, as a reporter, hiking out into the vast expanses of northeastern Colorado in the mid 1980s with some Catholic peace activists who planned to stage a protest at the gate surrounding a set of nuclear missile silos. I saw one of the same nuns get arrest at an abortion facility.

At some point, of course, protesters face a choice — will they break the law. That sounds like a simple line in the legal sand, but it isn’t.

Here is what I remember from that experience long ago. I offer this imperfect and simple typology as a way of introducing another interesting set of statistics — in a chart, of course — from social scientist Ryan Burge of the ReligionInPublic blog, who is also a GetReligion contributor.

This particular set of numbers looks at various religious traditions and the degree to which these various believers say they obey laws, without exception. You can see how that might affect questions linked to protest, civil disobedience and even the use of violence in protests.

But back to the very high plains of Colorado. We discussed several different levels of protest.

* Protesters can, of course, apply for parade permits and, when they have received one, they can strictly cooperate with public officials.

* It is possible to hold protests in public places where assemblies of various kinds are legal — period.

* Then again, protesters can obstruct city streets for as long as possible and, when confronted by police, they can disburse without a major confrontation.

* Or not. At some point, protesters can peacefully violate a law and refuse to leave — whether that’s a major road crossing, the whites only rows of a city bus, the front gates of an abortion facility or the security zone outside a nuclear missile silo. Hanging protest banners — or similar actions — is another option here. In civil disobedience, protesters accept that they will be arrested.


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What explains Donald Trump's unusual and controversial brandishing of the Bible?

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Observers are still scratching heads over President Trump’s unusual June 1 walk alongside top administration officials to the arson-damaged and boarded-up St. John’s Episcopal Church, not to pray or speak to an anxious nation but simply to brandish a Bible for the cameras. Politically risky removal of nearby demonstrators preceded the walk, which provoked a media / military / political uproar.

What’s going on here? Much of the following will be familiar for religion specialists. But amid all the 2020 discussion of, say, suburban women or the race of Joe Biden’s running mate, political reporters should be alert to religious dynamics. A related event June 2 said much and deserved more attention as the President and First Lady paid a ceremonial visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

Simply put, Trump cannot win unless he maintains Republicans’ customary lopsided support from white evangelical Protestants. He also needs a smaller but solid majority of non-Hispanic Catholics, the more devout the better. Think Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

Politico’s Gabby Orr nailed things in a May 22 analysis after the president prodded governors to reopen churches. “A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his re-election campaign,” because a downward slide in their enthusiasm “could sink” his prospects.

The White House no doubt reacted to its own internal polls, but Orr especially cited data from the Pew Research Center (media contact Anna Schiller, aschiller@pewresearch.org, 202–419-4514) and the Public Religion Research Institute or PRRI www.prri.org (contact Jordun Lawrence, press@prri.org, 202–688-3259). These two organizations are important because their polls usually distinguish white evangelicals from other Protestants, and white from Hispanic Catholics.

Turn to the PRRI report on “favorable” opinion toward Trump’s performance — not respondents’ voting intentions — as of March, April, and the latest survey May 26-31.

Looking at Trump’s two pivotal religious categories, with white evangelicals his favoribility in the three surveys went from 77 to 66 to 62%, down 15 points. With white Catholics, the decline went from 60 to 48 to 37%, a heart-stopping 23-point change.


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Hong Kong's religious freedom crisis takes backseat to basic journalistic norms in USA

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It’s been quite a time in America — arguably unprecedented — with massive Black Lives Matter demonstrations erupting across the nation following the death in police custody of George Floyd. And all of it in the midst of a killer pandemic, economic upheaval and a frightening, and for many psychologically debilitating, uncertainty over what will happen next.

Importantly, the BLM protests have also popped up in many smaller cities in America’s hinterlands, communities not generally thought of as activist hot spots. Click here for a sampling of the coverage of how widespread this has been, care of USA Today, or here for The Washington Post.

There are many offshoots to this monumental story, the core of which is the state of race relations, policing injustices and the Donald Trump administration’s response to this national reckoning.

One sidebar (from The Washington Post, again) is the absurdly hypocritical response of some authoritarian nations — perhaps China above all — to America’s turmoil.

That’s the nature of international political maneuvering, isn’t it? Never miss an opportunity to blame your adversaries when they display problems — no matter how unequal the comparison —that they’ve pestered you about for years.

I’m reminded of the quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When a man concludes that any stick is good enough to beat his foe with — that is when he picks up a boomerang.”

I will pick on China — you would not be wrong to think, “What, again?” — because of its Hong Kong problem that has, understandably, largely been absent from American press coverage of late.

Why understandably? Because, as should be obvious, the first responsibility of American mainstream journalism is to cover important domestic stories. Moreover, I’d wager that few Americans currently give a hoot about Hong Kong’s concern, given what’s going on in their own lives and streets.

So even normally well-read GetReligion readers may have fallen behind on the crucial human-rights angles in the Hong Kong story.


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Journalism cancels its moral voice: What does this mean for Catholic news? For religion news?

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I have always been fascinated with the concept that journalism functions as a moral watchdog on our society. As someone who spent most of his career at two New York tabloids (15 years at the New York Post, two others at the rival Daily News), reportage and story selection revolved heavily around morality.

A lot of it mirrored traditional religious morality.

Editors and reporters never used that language to describe their work, of course.

They still reported both sides of the story and gave people who were the subject of said story the chance to rebuke accusations. Whether it was a news account about an unfaithful politician (former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and former Congressman Anthony Weiner spring to mind), a Wall Street executive who embezzled money or a regular guy who shot and killed a convenient store clerk over a few dollars, if you broke one of the Ten Commandments then you had a very good chance of being splashed all over page one.

ProPublica, one of my favorite investigative news sites, has a mission statement that sums up this philosophy very well:

To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.

Where does this morality come from? It is rooted primarily in Judeo-Christian values, something that helped form American society during what is now called The Great Awakening.

News coverage — be it about politics, culture or religion — is largely made up of crimes (in the legal sense) or lapses in judgement (in a moral one). But the news media has changed in the Internet age, primarily because of social media. Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, to name just three, allows users — everyday people — to pump out content. That content can take many forms — from benign observations to what’s called hot takes — for all to read and see.

Truth, fact checking and context are not important. What matters are likes and followers. What we have now is something some have called “The Great Awokening” and it appears to have forever transformed our political discourse and the journalism that tries to report on it.

Mainstream news organizations, in their quest for clicks amid hope of figuring out a new business model, now mirror the content we all see on social media platforms.


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Howard County, Maryland, officials tried to ban Mass: Why wasn't that a news story?

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Does anyone remember the coronavirus pandemic?

Think back a week or even two. You may remember headlines about tensions between people who wanted to “open up” the economy at the local level and others who wanted to continue with lockdowns or other “shelter at home” policies for citizens as a whole (as opposed to those uniquely at risk). This was not strictly a left vs. right thing, but the further one went to the extremes — extended lockdowns vs. strong attempts to “return to normal” — the more political things became.

That seems so long ago. Still, I would like to flash back to something that happened recently in Maryland, the state I called home for more than a decade. Here at GetReligion, we have been spending quite a bit of time focusing on coverage of the overwhelming majority of religious flocks that are trying to return to some form of corporate worship — while stressing safety and social-distancing principles.

Here’s the Catholic News Agency headline: “Maryland county lifts ban on Communion.”

My question: Did you see any mainstream news coverage of this story? The overture:

Howard County, Maryland, has reversed a policy that banned consumption of any food or drink during religious services, effectively preventing the licit celebration of Mass.

A county spokesman told CNA May 28 the prohibition will be removed, and faith leaders will be consulted on future guidelines for church reopenings amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball issued an executive order delineating reopening regulations and conditions for houses of worship and other entities deemed “non-essential” by the state of Maryland.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” that order said.

Ever since seeing that news item, I have been running online searches — of news sources and then the Internet as a whole — for mainstream news coverage of this amazing example of a clash between government officials and worship in mainstream religious institutions.

Please click here and scan the results of a new search for the terms “Howard County,” “Communion” and “Maryland.”

What do you see in these results?


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In Phyllis Schlafly biopic on FX, evangelicals got all the acid -- but Schlafly was Catholic

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“Mrs. America,” a nine-part biopic on Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly and her philosophical opposites in the 1970s feminist movement, ended last week on Walt Disney’s FX Channel. Depressingly, the show never got down to the religious convictions that drove this cultural pioneer.

I last wrote about the show here in the hopes that this infotainment extravaganza might get better. It did not. You could see this in the shows. You could see this in news coverage of the series.

Instead, this media event became a lesson on how blue-staters (and I live in one such locale) perceive the universe. Conservative — and usually religious — characters were one-dimensional jerks while the folks on the left were interesting, complex people with much inner turmoil. The latter group was always true to their nobler selves whereas Schlafly was never true to anything except her own scheming self.

As I watched episodes week by week, I was surprised that conservative and religious-market media — Catholic media, for example — weren’t tracking this rewrite of history, despite accusations being lobbed at Schlafly such as her being in bed with the Ku Klux Klan.

Never mind that even Slate said evidence was sketchy at best that Schlafly colluded with that group. The Klan was anti-Catholic and Schlafly was Catholic. But let’s not let the facts get in our way, in a series that many news outlets took seriously as a commentary on that era.

The real heroes of the show were the founding members of the National Women’s Political Caucus such as U.S. Reps. Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, author Betty Friedan, Republican operative Jill Ruckelshaus and Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. Magazine. Their beliefs and assumptions — including an unstinting advocacy on behalf of abortion — are never questioned, whereas Schlafly is continually portrayed as a racist who specializes in weird put-downs of her black housekeepers. Has anyone offered on-the-record, journalism-level proof that there incidents ever happened?

Schlafly does have a biographer, David Critchlow, but no one checked with him before airing the show. Here’s what he told The Federalist about all the factual errors in the series.

The show took such liberties with reality that even the Los Angeles Times ran fact-checker pieces after each episode explaining what was made up and what was true.


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COVID-19 story few are covering: Vast majority of Baptists (and others) are being careful

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Every year or two, I have to pull out that old parable about the old man who lived in a lighthouse.

Whenever I use this tale, I apologize.

So I am sorry — again. But this parable really does contain a truth that is relevant to news overage of the complicated legal questions — secular law and even church law — surrounding efforts to re-open religious sanctuaries during the evolving coronavirus crisis. So here we go again, back to that lighthouse on the Atlantic coastline (or another foggy zip code).

… This lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts. Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who leapt from bed shouting, "What was that sound?"

Right, right. This is kind of like Sherlock Holmes and the “dog that didn’t bark.”

So what’s the point? The other day the team at Baptist Press released a report with a snoozer of a headline: “SBC leaders commend CDC guidelines to churches.”

What’s the news in that?

I would argue, again, that a key story right now linked to First Amendment standoffs about freedom of religious practice has been the fact that major religious groups — including big Sunbelt flocks containing some MAGA-hat people — have cooperated with reasonable “shelter in place” programs. Most religious leaders seem to be going out of their way, while a few loud pastors and local government leaders cause a fuss, to cooperate with social-distancing principles linked to reopening sanctuaries for worship. Yes, President Donald Trump has had a few words to say, as well.

Here is the top of that calm Baptist Press piece. Please read carefully (this includes journalists):

Southern Baptist leaders commended to churches the new federal guidelines for restoring in-person worship gatherings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, even as efforts to resolve conflicts between state governments and faith communities continue.


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This is a news story: Shuttered churches fuel death of Catholic newspapers during pandemic

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When it comes to religious media, there is nothing like the Catholic press. Spanning the doctrinal spectrum, there are 600 Catholic-based news websites and newspapers in the United States and Canada alone. In the past few years, the diversity of the Catholic press has provided a wealth of information and insights to readers and to mainstream journalists.

Like secular news outlets, Catholic media also face financial hardships created by the pandemic.

This is a trend that has, of course, affected all news media and across many other industries, such as hospitality and tourism to name just two. Secular news outlets, particularly local newspapers, faced an uphill battle before the coronavirus. They face an even tougher battle now that advertising has dried up amid an ever-worsening economy.

Over the last two months, the nation’s unemployment rate has ticked up. At the same time, layoffs have affected many large newsrooms like The Atlantic despite some of the best pandemic coverage. If technology like the internet has led to the slow death of print, the pandemic has accelerated what always seemed like the inevitable. Indeed, as Axios recently pointed out, no publisher is immune to COVID-19. It’s something newspaper publishers are monitoring very closely as their editors and reporters work from home and continue to report on the pandemic.

Catholic media outlets are not immune to such hardships. The first real sign that the situation was worsening came on April 9 when Bayard, which owns and operates 190 magazines, announced it would cease print publication of four magazines: Catechist, Hopeful Living, Today’s Catholic Teacher and Catholic Digest. This last monthly magazine, which has been published since 1936, boasts a circulation of 300,000. Catholic Digest also has a website that is updated regularly. It’s reach, as expected, is greater online — with traffic reaching nearly 16,000 visits each month.

All print publications have been struggling to make money since Google and Facebook now take the largest slices of the advertising revenue pie.


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New York Times asks what 'hardcore' New Yorkers miss during pandemic (hint: no steeples)

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It is one of the most famous covers in the long, rich history of The New Yorker.

“View of the World from 9th Avenue,” by illustrator Saul Steinberg, is one of the first images that come to mind when many New Yorkers of a certain age and, perhaps, social class, describe the alpha city they call home. The drawing is also known as “A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World.”

I am not a New Yorker, but I gained a little bit of experience in that world while teaching journalism, religion and mass media there for roughly two months a year over the past five years. This period of my life that is now, sadly, over, and the coronavirus had nothing to do with this departure.

I claim no great insights into New York, but I really enjoyed this experience.

Everything of substance that I learned during that time came from New Yorkers and that shaped what I saw happening around me. But here is one of the most important things I learned from the set of New Yorkers that I came to know — New York City contains some absolutely amazing churches and religious flocks of every size and shape. This website will tell you lots of what your need to know about that: “A Journey Through NYC Religions.”

Now, please notice that this statement undercuts a popular myth among New York haters in other parts of America. Yes, the Big Apple is a rather secular and liberal place, especially in Manhattan. But in reality, it’s hard to tell the story of Manhattan — past or present — without including religious faith in the mix.

Now, with that in mind, look again at the “View of the World from 9th Avenue.” What is missing from this iconic New York City image that is actually present in real life (other than, of course, the existence of the rest of the United States of America out in flyover country)? What is missing from this picture of New York City life that is so popular with a certain brand of New York insider?

Here’s a clue. It’s the same thing that is missing from a recent feature in The New York Times that ran with this double-decker headline:

What Hardcore New Yorkers Really Miss

Wistful words from the actor Alec Baldwin, the comedian Amber Ruffin, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the chef Amanda Cohen, the assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and more.

Note the phrase “hardcore New Yorkers.”

What does that adjective mean? Apparently it refers to people who live in a city with no steeples, no cathedrals, no synagogues, etc.


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