Godbeat

, , , , , , , , , ,

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

, , , , , , , , , ,

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.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Why reporters (and clergy) should heed religious signals in pop culture

, , , , , , , , ,

Readers who have followed GetReligion for quite a few years may remember that, in 1991, I left full-time work at The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) to teach as “Communicator on Culture” at Denver Seminary. Basically, I was teaching classes about religious content and trends in mainstream news coverage and popular culture, providing material for apologetics.

In the summer of 1993, when I moved to Milligan College in East Tennessee, I spoke at a national conference for Episcopal church leaders and laypeople, delivering a lecture entitled: “And Now, a Word from Your Culture — Mass Media, Ministry and Tuning in New Signals.” The respondent to my paper, by the way, was Father N.T. Wright, a big-league British intellectual who was beginning to gain some fame in North America. Here is the opening of that lecture:

True or false: It is impossible to talk — in terms of practical details and statistics — about how modern Americans live their lives without addressing the role played by television and other forms of news and entertainment media.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the role that television and other forms of news and entertainment media play in the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: This applies to my church.

Now, this era of my life surfaced in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), because of two recent posts here at GetReligion. They were, “Old Pete Townshend asks some big questions about rock and what happens after he dies” and “Washington Post offers look at five country music myths and misses a familiar ghost.”

The big idea in the podcast: Every now and then popular culture sends out “signals” addressing subjects on topics that religious leaders simply cannot ignore.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Friday Five: Clergy abuse scandal, Buttigieg at church, politics of communion, N.T. Wright

, , , , , , , ,

It’s a big number. A really big number. As in, $4 billion.

As part of its “The Reckoning” series, The Associated Press reported this week that a surge of new abuse claims threatens the Catholic Church like never before — “with potentially more than 5,000 new cases and payouts topping $4 billion.”

Meanwhile, AP reporters and other experts examined the state of the clergy abuse crisis in a Facebook Live panel discussion. Watch it here.

Now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Pete Buttigieg keeps making major headlines in the Democratic presidential race.

We highlighted his visit to a black church in the South on Sunday, asking a question that news stories mostly ignored: “Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?” The New York Times later followed up with another story on Buttigieg and black voters. Still, the key question we raised remained unexplored.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Pelosi points to her Catholic faith in denying she hates Trump. Will news reports offer any context?

, , , ,

“Don’t mess with me.”

It’s the soundbite of a busy news day — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s confrontation with a reporter who asked if she hates President Donald Trump.

But as you probably already know, Pelosi pointed to her Catholic faith in the exchange, immediately pushing this political story into the realm of religion news.

Some of the crucial details, via the New York Times:

The flash of anger from Ms. Pelosi — “Don’t mess with me,” she told the reporter — came as she was leaving a news conference in which she had just finished discussing her decision to move forward with articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump.

“Do you hate the president?” James Rosen, a reporter for a conservative television network, asked loudly as Ms. Pelosi made her way offstage in a television studio near the Capitol.

Ms. Pelosi whipped around to face Mr. Rosen, wagging her finger at him and saying, “Don’t accuse me,” as he explained that he was asking her to respond to Republicans’ claims that Democrats were pursuing Mr. Trump’s impeachment out of personal animus against him.

“This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office,” the speaker said sharply after returning to the lectern to speak into a microphone and face the still-rolling cameras. “As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone.”

“I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love, and always pray for the president,” she continued. “And I still pray for the president. I pray for the president all the time. So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”

In scanning the spot-news coverage today, I was curious to see if journalists would offer any background and context on Pelosi’s faith.

That information certainly seems relevant to the story, right?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NBC News toasts Pete Buttigieg in a hit piece aimed (#Surprise) at the Salvation Army

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here we go again. No doubt about it, one of the key stories of the day offers a fiery mix of politics, money, sexuality, social justice and, yes, religion.

I’m talking about this NBCNews.com headline: “Pete Buttigieg criticized for volunteering with Salvation Army.”

Stay tuned for upcoming debates featuring Democrats seeking the White House. Will this issue have legs in the news? Maybe. Maybe not. I think it depends on whether candidates on the woke side of the party decide that it is good or bad for their prospects for an openly gay candidate to even hint at a willingness for dialogue and tolerance on religious-liberty issues.

Meanwhile, there is this journalism question: Does anyone at NBC News realize that the Salvation Army is a CHURCH as well as a major provider of help to the poor? Hold that thought. First, here is the overture:

Pete Buttigieg is drawing criticism after pictures of him volunteering for the Salvation Army, which has historically opposed gay rights, recently resurfaced on social media.

In the photos, Buttigieg is seen standing outside Peggs restaurant in South Bend, Indiana, where he is the mayor, for the Red Kettle Ring Off, an annual charity initiative during which public officials compete to raise money for the Salvation Army. While the photos were from 2017, Buttigieg, who has surged to the top of many polls of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, has been participating in the event since at least 2015, according to local news reports. He also held an event at the Salvation Army in South Bend last year. 

“I know the photos are two years old, but still, I can't help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it,” tweeted Zach Ford, press secretary of the Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy organization.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

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

, , , , , , , , ,
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.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Separation of church, state and pot: NYTimes says religious liberty issues here are not a joke

, , , , , , , , ,

Think of it as one of the defining mantras of America’s church-state orthodoxy: state officials are supposed to avoid getting entangled in deciding what is good doctrine and what is bad doctrine. They are, of course, allowed to worry about matters of profit, fraud and clear threat to life and health.

However, the legal powers that be have also had wrestle with other questions tied to the stunningly liberal (in the old sense of that word) framework created by the First Amendment: Who gets to decide what is a “religion” and what is not? How does the state decide who is sincere and who is, well, sleazy?

You can see all of these issues rumbling about in an important New York Times piece that I have been trying to sort out for some time now. This topic has been covered before (click here for earlier GetReligion posts), but this story — in my opinion — probes deeper. Here is the sweeping double-decker headline:

Inside the War for California’s Cannabis Churches

Illegal marijuana dispensaries outnumber legal ones more than three to one in California. What’s the role of the cannabis church?

Now, church-state experts have — at the U.S. Supreme Court and in Congress — wrestled with issues related to religious rights that involve drugs that are or have been illegal. It’s natural to ask if these religious organizations are offering rites incarnating centuries of religious traditions and doctrines (think Native Americans and peyote) or are they modern innovations to help people avoid laws they do not accept?

At first, I thought that money questions were going to completely dominate this Times piece — which is understandable. Is the Jah Healing flock a church or a cannabis storefront? I was glad when broader church-state issues entered the discussion.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Serious question: Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?

, , , , , ,

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” urges an old journalistic adage.

What about a prominent liberal pastor saying something? Should the news media check that out, too?

More on those questions in a moment. But first, I’ll back up and offer a little background: Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who has emerged as a surprisingly strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, went to church Sunday in North Carolina.

As The Associated Press helpfully pointed out, Buttigieg even brought his own Bible to worship.

Along with AP, the Washington Post and the Raleigh News & Observer — and probably other news organizations that I missed — offered interesting takes on the white gay mayor’s visit to a church pastored by a prominent left-wing black activist. Give credit to the Post for noting that (1) Buttigieg is an Episcopalian, and (2) the church he visited is affiliated with the Disciples of Christ — both theologically progressive denominations.

The stories get into poverty and other crucial issues, but I’m going to focus on a specific point raised in all three articles: the connection, if any, between Buttigieg’s sexual orientation and his low support among black voters in the Bible Belt.

Let’s start with AP’s reference to that issue:

Buttigieg discussed topics from health care to climate change during the forum that followed the church’s Sunday service, to which a campaign spokesman confirmed that the mayor brought his own Bible. Even before the candidate began speaking, however, Barber sought to defuse a question that has proven thorny for Buttigieg in his struggle to break through with black voters: whether being gay plays any role in his troubles with a constituency that can trend more socially conservative.

Barber swatted away what he called the “false narrative” of division between African American and LGBTQ voters, and after the service reiterated that any portrayal of tension between the two communities is “not factual.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Friday Five: Thanksgiving, God and Trump, LATimes vs. Fuller, Jimmy Carter, Satan

, , , , ,

We interrupt this day-after-Thanksgiving holiday to update you on the latest religion headlines.

I hope you and your family are enjoying a wonderful time of Black Friday shopping or — if you’re like me — watching football and eating leftover chocolate pie while spending precious time with my family.

In my case, I am enjoying quality time with my 1-year-old grandson, Bennett.

Anyway, let’s dive right into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: We posted earlier in the week on those news reports that Rick Perry believes God “ordained” Donald Trump (not to mention Barack Obama) to be president.

The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., has an interesting follow-up piece on that — tied to comments by Nikki Haley — concerning whether politicians are chosen by God.


Please respect our Commenting Policy