Evangelicals

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Thinking along with Mark Pinsky: On talking with Trump's lawyer who was raised Jewish

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I am sorry for the delay on this think piece from The Forward, since really should have run during the impeachment proceedings. However, I never thought of this as a piece about Donald Trump or any of his pack.

No, I thought GetReligion readers would want to see this because it was written by Mark Pinsky, the veteran religion-beat pro best known for his work in the heavily evangelical world that surrounds Orlando.

Pinsky is also the author of a book that I recommend when asked one of the questions that I hear all the time. That question: What is the best book to use in a college or university level course about covering religion news?

Well, of course I am going to recommend this project from my friends and former colleagues linked to The Media Project: “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.” It includes my essay on religion-beat strategies for editors and publishers, “Getting Religion in the Newsroom.”

But there really isn’t a religion-beat 101 book, a kind of manual for professionals who are starting the process of reading themselves up to speed on the myriad subjects, movements and vocabularies needed to cover this complex subject.

But there is a book that I recommend that does a great job of explaining WHY reporters need to take the challenges of this beat seriously and why they should strive to get inside the beliefs and worldviews of the believers they need to cover. That book is Mark Pinksy’s small volume entitled, “A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”

This brings us to the weekend think piece, that recent Forward feature that ran with this headline: “Trump Impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow says ‘I’ve never felt not Jewish.’ “

Why did Pinsky land this exclusive interview?

Sekulow said the interview with the Forward was the only one he planned to do ahead of the impeachment trial, and that he agreed to do it because I have been writing about him on and off for more than a quarter century — and because his great-uncle, Sonya Sekular, worked for the Forward in the 1940s, Sekulow said.


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There's a whiff of a tiff when the pros try to pick the past decade's top religion stories

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What were the past decade’s top religion stories?

In the current Christian Century magazine, Baylor historian Philip Jenkins lists his top 10 in American Christianity and — journalists take note -- correctly asserts that all will “continue to play out” in coming years.  

His list: The growth of unaffiliated “nones,” the papacy of Francis, redefinition of marriage, Charleston murders and America’s “whiteness” problem, religion and climate change, Donald Trump and the evangelicals, gender and identity, #MeToo combined with women’s leadership, seminaries in crisis and impact of religious faith (or lack thereof) on low fertility rates.

Such exercises are open to debate, and there’s mild disagreement on the decade’s top events as drawn from Religion News Service coverage by Senior Editor Paul O’Donnell. Unlike Jenkins, this list scans the interfaith and global scenes.

The RNS picks:  “Islamophobia” in America (with a nod to President Trump), the resurgent clergy sex abuse crisis, #ChurchToo scandals, those rising “nones,” mass shootings at houses of worship, gay ordination and marriage, evangelicals in power (Trump again) as “post-evangelicals” emerge, anti-Semitic attacks and religious freedom issues.

You can see that the same events can be divvied up in various ways, and that there’s considerable overlap but also intriguing differences.

Jenkins  looks for broad “developments” and focuses on the climate and transgender debates, racial tensions, shrinking seminaries and low birth rates (see the Guy Memo on that last phenomenon).

By listing religious freedom, RNS correctly highlights a major news topic that Jenkins missed. RNS includes the U.S. legal contests over the contraception mandate in Obamacare and the baker who wouldn’t design a unique wedding cake for a gay couple. Those placid debates are combined a bit awkwardly with overseas attacks against Muslims in China, India and Myanmar, and against Christians in Nigeria. OK, what about Christians elsewhere?


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Trump and Buttigieg try to reach out to voters who -- to one degree or another -- are pro-life

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Trump and Buttigieg try to reach out to voters who -- to one degree or another -- are pro-life

President Donald Trump and Democrat Pete Buttigieg recently offered radically different stands on abortion, as both attempted to reach out to Catholic and evangelical swing voters trapped between their parties.

Trump made history as the first president to speak in person at the national March for Life, which marks the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. 

"All of us here understand an eternal truth: Every child is a precious and sacred gift from God. Together, we must protect, cherish and defend the dignity and the sanctity of every human life," said Trump, who for years backed abortion rights and Planned Parenthood. He insists that his views have evolved, like those of Republican hero Ronald Reagan.

"When we see the image of a baby in the womb, we glimpse the majesty of God's creation. ... When we watch a child grow, we see the splendor that radiates from each human soul. One life changes the world," he said.

While commentators stressed that Trump attended the march to please his conservative evangelical base, this massive event in Washington, D.C., draws a complex crowd that is hard to label. It includes, for example, Catholics and evangelicals from groups that have been critical of Trump's personal life and ethics, as well as his stands on immigration, the death penalty and related issues.

Videos of this year's march showed many signs praising the president, but also signs critical of his bruising brand of politics.     

A Facebook post by a Catholic priest -- Father Jeffrey Dauses of the Diocese of Baltimore -- captured this tension. Telling pro-lifers to "wake up," Dauses attacked what he called Trump's "callous disregard for the poor, for immigrants and refugees, for women. … This man is not pro-life. He is pro-himself."

Meanwhile, Buttigieg -- an openly gay Episcopalian -- did something even more daring when he appeared at a Fox News town hall in Iowa.


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New podcast: Was Trump preaching to an evangelical choir at the March for Life?

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To start things off, please get yourself a map that includes Washington, D.C., and nearby states. If you have lived in that region, just pull one up in your mind’s eye.

Now, draw an imaginary 300-mile circle — or perhaps one bigger than that — around the Beltway kingdom.

If you were the principal of a Christian middle-school or high-school, how many hours would you allow students and some faculty members or parents to ride on a school bus to attend the March for Life that marks the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision? What if they were on a rented touring bus, with better seats and (most importantly) a better safety rating?

Would you let them drive for five hours to the march? How about eight? Now, to understand the topic discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), ask these questions:

(1) What are the key states touched by that big circle around D.C.? Obviously there’s Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia. But Ohio isn’t out of the question, is it?

(2) Thinking about religious schools and institutions, would there be more Catholic schools in this circle or evangelical Protestant? Think about the size of the Catholic populations in several of these states.

(3) Which of these states have significant clout in American politics, especially in White House races? Obviously, Ohio (think of all that history) and Pennsylvania would be at the top of that list.

So now, picture the massive crowds at the March for Life. You can understand why, year after year, it is dominated by waves of buses containing Catholic students of all ages — even though it is true that evangelical Protestants are now active in the Right to Life Movement. If you’ve attended or covered a March for Life, you know — to be blunt — that this is not an event dominated by white evangelicals.

Let’s add one more lens, as we look at media coverage of the 2020 march. It’s a political lens.

Name the key states that, in 2016, elected Trump to the presidency. Do white evangelicals dominate those states — the Rust Belt (especially Ohio and Pennsylvania) and Florida — or do Catholics of varying degrees of religious practice?

So here is my question: Was the main reason that advisors sent Trump to the March for Life to preach to his white evangelical Protestant base?


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Yo, Politico scribes: You might want to attend March for Life next year and count the Catholics

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Anyone who works on Capitol Hill or within a mile or two of Union Station in Washington, D.C., knows what happens on the day of the annual March for Life.

Lots and lots of folks roll into town. The streets are lined with buses packed with students — often the orange-yellow school buses used for short-range work. Then there are miles of rented buses that roll in from schools — middle schools, high schools and colleges — all over the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and even the Midwest.

It’s pretty easy to note that the vast majority of the buses are from Catholic institutions. It’s harder to judge the points of origin for groups that fly into D.C. to take part.

If you watch the march itself, you’ll see all kinds of unusual groups: Feminists for Life, Atheists for Life, Democrats for Life, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, etc. There are lots of evangelical Protestants present and their numbers have risen since the marches began in 1974. following Roe v. Wade.

But the vast majority of people who arrive early — especially for the annual Vigil for Life (first photo) at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception — and stay late are Roman Catholics. This is fitting since the march began with the work of a Catholic Democrat named Nellie Gray who, after Roe, left her work as a Labor Department lawyer to become an activist. The symbol of the march — a rose — is also a popular symbol for St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Why bring this up?

Well, have you heard that 81 percent of white evangelicals just love Donald Trump? It’s safe to assume that most readers have heard that, methinks.

Somehow, that often cited (but rather complex) fact led — according to the Politico — to Trump’s historic decision to address this year’s March for Life, as seen in this headline: “Trump tries to shore up evangelical support at March for Life rally.”

Never mind that the crucial states that gave Trump the presidency — especially in the Midwest — are heavily Catholic and usually (think Ohio) are won by the candidate who wins the Sunday-morning Catholic swing vote.


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Tips for mainstream journalists as they grapple with America's growing religious complexity

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Last month, the Pew Research Center issued an innovative analysis of 49,719  sermons delivered between last April 7 and June 1 in 6,431 U.S. congregations that were posted online. This report made a bit of news and is worth perusing if you missed it (click here).

 This Guy Memo recommends to fellow writers that a useful appendix to that document (click here for .pdf) deserves more than a glance. It details Pew’s standard system for “classifying congregations by religious tradition,” with 244 specific identities cited in interviewing, grouped into 19 categories.

Pew makes a major contribution to analysis of American religion with its frequent polling practice of pushing to get respondents'  specific identities and affiliations beyond the usually unhelpful “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” approach of old-fashioned polling.

What kind of Protestant?

For that matter, what kind of, say, Presbyterian (tmatt shows a blitz of options here)?

Are you an active or nominal churchgoer?

With the media frenzy over religion and politics, polls nowadays at least usually ask Protestants whether they self-identify as “evangelical” or not, whatever that word means.

When Pew asks poll respondents about the specific congregation they affiliate with, it then helpfully lumps the Protestants into the three main categories of “Evangelical,” “Mainline” and “Historically Black.” These three groups are distinct not only on religion but in social and political terms. Writers are likely to be less perplexed by Pew’s other categories of Catholic, Orthodox Christian, “other Christian,”  “Mormon” (there’s that controversial word again!), Jehovah’s Witness, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, “other faiths,” "miscellaneous" and “unclassifiable.”   

The following examples from Pew’s Protestant taxonomy will indicate some of the difficulties with America’s astonishing religious variety, particularly for those new to religion writing.


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Tim Tebow marries Miss Universe: It's tabloid heaven, but there's a deeper story there

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Let’s face it. A New York City tabloid is going to do what a New York City tabloid is going to do.

So, if you had to make a prediction, what do you think would be in the lede of a New York Daily News report about Tim Tebow marring a woman who had been named Miss Universe?

Think it through. What aspect of Tebow’s life have more than a few journalists (and activists with lower motives) probed ever since That Press Conference during his playing days at the University of Florida?

So here we go:

Tim Tebow has scored.

The former NFL quarterback and current Mets minor leaguer, who has said he planned to remain a virgin until he gets hitched, is now a married man.

Tebow wed 2017 Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters in Cape Town, South Africa, about a year after getting engaged, People reported.

Believe it or not, the Page Six team at The New York Post stayed quite tame, with: “Tim Tebow marries former Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters.” I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t the Post headline I thought that we would see.

So what was the story here?

On one level, of course, this was a celebrity wedding. Thus, the stories had all the details about the bride’s gown, the groom’s tux, the menu for the reception (Tebow has a special diet when he is in training for baseball), etc., etc. Readers also need to know why Tebow has been so controversial, in the first place. Thus, the Daily News tossed in this passage late in the story:

Tebow’s personal life has been a hot topic over the years, including him stating in 2009 that he planned to practice abstinence until marriage due to his Christian faith. He proposed to Nel-Peters in January 2019 at his family’s farm near Jacksonville, Fla.

In addition to his baseball career, Tebow works as a college football analyst for ESPN’s SEC Network.

USA Today offered a kind of wink-wink passage high in its report, centering on Tebow’s expectations about this event:


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Facing ties that bind between 'pro-life' issues, like human trafficking and immigration

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Facing ties that bind between 'pro-life' issues, like human trafficking and immigration

It's hard to talk about the horrors of human trafficking -- including young women and children forced into the sex trade -- without mentioning the I-10 corridor across northern Florida and over to California.

Florida and California are in the top three on the list of U.S. states involved in human-trafficking cases, according to Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. Any realistic discussion of this crisis has to include women, children, poverty, prostitution and crisis pregnancies.

"There are so many overlapping issues in all of this. But you know you're dealing with abused women and, often, their pregnancies," said Ashlyn Portero, co-executive director of City Church in Tallahassee, Fla., which has two campuses close to I-10.

"Churches that want to help can start right there. …When you see those connections, you know you're talking about issues that fall under the pro-life umbrella."

Thus, human trafficking is an issue that "pro-life" religious leaders in Tallahassee, as well as many other urban areas, need to face if they want to minister to women in crisis pregnancies and their children, she added. The problem is that tackling this issue also involves talking -- or even preaching -- about subjects that many people will call "political" in a state like Florida. Take immigration, for example.

Timing is crucial. Right now, thousands of Americans are preparing for the annual March For Life, which is linked to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 legalizing abortion. This year's march in Washington, D.C., will be on Jan. 24.

"When people come back from something like the March For Life, lots of them will be asking, 'What can we do now?' They want to do something practical," said Portero, in a telephone interview. "But these issues all seem so big and complex. It's hard to know where to start, in terms of ministries that will help real people."

One thing is certain: Nothing happens in a typical church without clear communication through preaching. That's where things can get tricky.


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Concerning a Christian-school student and her rainbow birthday cake (and online pics)

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If GetReligion readers search the nearly 17 years of material on our site for this term — “doctrinal covenant” — they will find five or six screens (depending on browser settings) worth of posts. Click here and explore that if you wish.

What we have here is story after story about disputes between private religious schools (or similar institutions) and students, parents, faculty members or staffers. The vast majority of the reports are about LGBTQ-related clashes rooted in centuries of Christian and Jewish doctrines about sexuality and marriage. There may be cases involving Muslim doctrine, but they don’t seem to make it into the news.

Private religious schools — whether on the doctrinal left or right — are voluntary associations, and the word “voluntary” is crucial. No one has to attend one of these religious schools or work for them. However, it’s important (from a legal point of view) that students, parents, etc., clearly acknowledge that they are consenting to follow — or at least not openly attack — the doctrines and traditions that define the life of a religious private institution.

Thus, most of these religious schools require students, parents, faculty, etc., to SIGN a “doctrinal covenant” that states these teachings and the school rules that are linked to them.

Readers who glance through those GetReligion posts about news coverage of these cases will notice that these media reports rarely mention the existence of these covenants (they are often referred to as mere “rules,” thus failing to note their doctrinal content) and, if they are mentioned, the stories usually fail to note that people involved in disputes with these schools voluntarily signed them. In other words, who needs to know that First Amendment issues are involved?

This brings us to the “rainbow cake girl” story, as covered by The Louisville Courier Journal, The Washington Post and other newsrooms. The headline in the Courier Journal shows how this story is being framed: “Louisville Christian school expelled student over a rainbow cake, family says.”


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