LGBTQ

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About that semi-apology by Chick-fil-A czar: Is this a mainstream news story or not?

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As we approached New Year’s Day, and this new era in GetReligion.org work, religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling started floating some trial balloons in our team’s behind-the-scenes email chatter.

For example, he suggested that we needed to run short, punchy commentary items every now and then when there was an interesting religion-beat story breaking or there was a potential story lurking somewhere in the digital weeds.

Long ago, GetReligion even had a “Got News?” logo for that kind of thing, atop posts that pointed to interesting, potentially newsworthy items in denominational wire services or other alternative sources of religion-beat information.

So what would this look like? Maybe something like this. Have you seen any mainstream news coverage of the leader of Chick-fil-A writing a letter admitting that his company messed up the whole ties-that-bind situation with Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

This story is all over the place in conservative Christian media, but, so far, I’m not seeing anything in the mainstream press. Here is the headline at DISRN: “Chick-fil-A CEO laments “inadvertently discrediting outstanding organizations" in giving strategy switch.”

So is this a story or not? It’s obvious that the original funding shift was a story, because it caused a firestorm in elite media (must-read Bobby Ross post here). Now there is this, care of DISRN:

In an open letter to the American Family Association (AFA), Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy expressed that the company "inadvertently discredited several outstanding organizations" when the fast food giant announced it would be restructuring its philanthropic strategy by halting donations to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes last year.

AFA President Tim Wildmon had written Cathy asking if Chick-fil-A would publicly state that both ministries are not hate groups because of their beliefs concerning sexuality, marriage, and family.

Cathy responded:


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'Uncle Ted' McCarrick is on the move again: Is this a major Catholic news story or not?

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So, let’s say that there is a major piece of news that breaks concerning the life and times of the man previously known as Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

This is something that happens quite frequently, even though the disgraced former cardinal moved into the wide open spaces of West Kansas, living as a guest in a Capuchin friary.

Ah, but is he still there?

That leads us to this simple, but important, headline at the Catholic News Agency: “Theodore McCarrick has moved from Kansas friary.” As I write this, I am not seeing follow-up coverage of this development at any mainstream media websites. Here’s some of the key CNA material:

A spokesman for the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Conrad told CNA Jan. 7 that McCarrick left St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kansas, just days ago. He has moved to a residential community of priests who have been removed from ministry, senior Church officials told CNA.

The former cardinal made the decision to leave the Kansas friary himself over the Christmas period, sources say, adding that his continued presence in the friary had become a strain on the Franciscan community that was hosting him.

The story notes that McCarrick’s new home remains unknown or a secret and that he is paying his own rent. So why move now?

Sources familiar with McCarrick’s situation told CNA that both the Kansas friary and McCarrick had been concerned that a forthcoming report on the former cardinal’s career, due to be released by the Vatican in the near future, would bring disruptive media attention to the friary.

McCarrick apparently hopes the new “secluded” location will limit media attempts to contact him in the event of renewed interest in his case, a Church official told CNA.

So here is the question that some Catholics — repeat “some,” mainly on the left — would raise: Can this report be trusted since this story was broken by an “alternative” Catholic news source, a theologically conservative news operation linked to EWTN and the legacy of Mother Angelica?


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After decades of fighting, United Methodists avoid a visit from ghost of the Episcopal future?

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It’s the Methodist question I have heard the most from GetReligion readers (and even locals here in East Tennessee) over the weekend.

I will paraphrase: If the conservatives have been winning the big votes at United Methodist conferences for the past couple of decades, then why are news reports saying that the traditionalists have agreed to “leave the United Methodist Church”?

This is the response that popped into my head a few hours ago after round of news reports, Twitter and online buzz: Basically, I think conservative Methodists have been visited by the Ghost of the Episcopal Future.

Methodist traditionalists are not interested in 50 years of hand-to-hand legal conflict with the entrenched United Methodist principalities and powers. Hold that thought. Meanwhile, I will admit that it’s hard to see the logic of this statement in any one news report. Let’s start with some math from the Associated Press:

Members of the 13-million-person denomination have been at odds for years over the issue, with members in the United States leading the call for full inclusion for LGBTQ people. 

The rift widened last year when delegates meeting in St. Louis voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which affirmed bans on LGBTQ-inclusive practices. A majority of U.S.-based delegates opposed that plan but were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.

By the way: The numbers in that first paragraph are accurate, as opposed to the following circulated by Reuters: “The United Methodist Church lists more than 13 million members in the United States and 80 million worldwide.” That’s way off, but quite a few online and broadcast outlets picked up that error and ran with it.

Accurate math really is important here. So are the doctrines that are at stake, which are much broader than battles over marriage and sexuality (see my two “On Religion” columns about these trends here, and then here).

The key is two realities that are in constant tension.


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Ryan Burge combination punch: Concerning Republicans, Democrats and gaps in pews

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Attention religion-news professionals and all of your news consumers. Do you remember where you were in 2012 when you read your first news report about the stunning rise of the “nones,” as in religiously unaffiliated Americans? Or, in terms of style, is it just Nones, at this point?

I sure do. In my case, I was actually at the press conference to announce the Pew Research Center survey results that became known as the “Nones on the Rise” report.

The religious implications of these numbers were stunning, especially for America’s declining Mainline Protestant flocks. However, the political implications were just as important — something noted by a scholar who has been following the “pew gap” phenomenon for decades. What is the “pew gap”? Here is the basic concept: The more a person (especially if she or he is white) attends worship services, the more likely they are to vote GOP.

Here is a bite of info from my “On Religion” column about that event, including a very prophetic quote from the pollster and scholar John C. Green of the University of Akron. Ready?

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the "Nones" skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

"It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. "If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties."

As you would expect, this observation leads us to a pair of new charts from political scientist Ryan Burge of the Religion in Public blog (and now a regular here at GetReligion).

Scan on.


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The Washington Post analyzes an assumed hate crime that became something else

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First things first. You are not seeing double.

Terry Mattingly and I have, in fact, written separate responses to a very interesting feature story called “The Confession.” This has happened two or three times in 17 years, with our pattern of calling dibs on new articles via email. After seeing that our pieces focused on different angles in the report (click here for tmatt’s take), he suggested that we hold my post for a bit and then run it as a kind of year-ender. I thought this was one of the best long forms of the year. Here, then, is how I saw it.

The Washington Post’s series on hate crimes has delivered another wonderfully complicated story, and this time it includes notes of forgiveness and grace.

The 5,300-word story by Peter Jamison does not engage this point directly, but calling the behavior of Nathan Stang a hate crime illustrates the occasional oddities of the category. Stang, an atheist gay man pursuing doctoral studies in music at Indiana University, served as the paid organist about 35 miles away at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom.

Stang claimed to have discovered the swastika and two messages left in black spray paint on the church’s exterior. “Heil Trump,” one message said. “Fag church,” said the other. 

The latter invective led to rapid cries of a hate crime. Within six months, the Brown County Sheriff’s Department arrested the perpetrator, and it was not a neo-Nazi wearing a Make America Great Again cap or carrying a sign filled with vile insults. It was Stang, who confessed his act of vandalism to sheriff’s deputy Brian Shrader. 

The deputy had suspicions about the malicious graffiti from the beginning, and Jamison’s choice of adjective for the congregation helped unlock the mystery.

 Jamison writes:

The detective had put his finger on what was bothering him: the words “Fag Church.” St. David’s was indeed a beacon of support for gay rights. But the fact had gone all but unnoticed outside the church’s several dozen parishioners.


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Big news in 2020? Thinking about the religious left, Mayor Pete and black churchgoers

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Think of it as a kind of “small-t” end of the year tradition here at GetReligion.

Toward the end of the annual podcast addressing the Top 10 religion-news events of the year — this year it’s “Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)” — host Todd Wilken always asks me the same question, one built on the assumption that journalists have some ability to see into the future. In other words, he asks something like, “What do you think will be the big religion stories of 2020?”

Like I said in the podcast post last week, news consumers can almost always count on the following:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God. …

You can’t go wrong with that list — especially with all of the ink being spilled, again, over Citizen Donald Trump and the great big monolithic “evangelical” vote.

However, there’s another political story that has, in the past three decades, become almost as predictable. It is, of course, the fill-in-the-blanks political feature about the rise (again) of the religious left (lower-case status) in the Democratic Party to do combat with the Religious Right (upper-case status).

These days, there is a bigger story that looms in the background of that old standard. Think of it as the Democrats trying to make peace with the religious middle in the age of the growing coalition of atheists, agnostics and the “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated). This coalition is now the most powerful religion-related power bloc in that party. The big question: How will this coalition, which includes the least religious congregation of Americans, get along with another crucial grassroots group — African-American churchgoers, who are among the most religious people in our culture.

That brings us to this weekend’s think piece, care of advocacy journalism team at The Daily Beast, that ran with this headline: “Mayor Pete Turns to God to Win Over Black Supporters.”


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What U.S. presidential candidates will be doing to court religious voters in 2020

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President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponents are courting voters with less than a year before the 2020 election, and many of them are chasing support from a variety of religious voters — in pews on the right and the left.

For example, all eyes are on Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his attempts to build trust with African-American churchgoers — a crucial part of the Democratic Party base in the Sunbelt and elsewhere. We will return to that subject.

But first, the Trump campaign announced recently that the president's re-election efforts would include launching three coalitions: “Evangelicals for Trump,” “Catholics for Trump” and “Jewish Voices for Trump.”

Despite being impeached by the House, the Trump campaign’s focus on these three religious groups aims to expand the president’s support, especially in battleground states where the former real-estate mogul won in 2016.

An analysis of the 2018 midterm elections conducted by Pew Research Center found continuity in the voting patterns of key religious groups. For example, white evangelicals voted for Republican candidates at about the same rate they did in 2014, while religiously unaffiliated voters and Jews again largely backed Democrats.

There’s plenty that Trump and the crowded field of Democrats challenging him have done over the past few months, and are continuing to do as we head into 2020, to court religious voters. Expect that to intensify with the start of the primaries next years and in the months before November’s general election.

Below is a look at Trump’ efforts, along with those of the seven Democrats who qualified for the next debate on Thursday night in Los Angeles.  


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Another Salvation Army story: This time, Nordstrom's dumps its famous bellringer

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The Salvation Army is the world’s largest social services provider, serving 23 million individuals a year. It is a venerable organization here in Seattle, active for at least 50 years, with bell ringers all over the city and surrounding suburbs.

Lately, it’s been clashing with the department store empire Nordstroms; it too a Seattle institution that was founded in 1901.

The Army’s been having a bad month PR-wise after the fast food giant Chick-fil-A announced it would no longer donate to them, ostensibly because both organizations have gotten a bad rap from homosexual groups. The Army’s been denying left and right that it discriminates, but the knives are out and what better place than liberal Seattle to wield them?

So The Seattle Times ran this on Christmas Eve:

For 19 years, 85-year-old Dick Clarke has raised money for The Salvation Army during the holiday season — 18 of them ringing a bell beside a red kettle for donations outside Nordstrom’s downtown Seattle store. He loved the conversations and the feeling of giving back through the more than $100,000 he collected. He volunteered five days a week, six hours a day.

“The best thing I like about Thanksgiving is the next day I go to work,” said the retired teacher and principal.

Or that’s how he used to feel. This year, Nordstrom told The Salvation Army it would no longer allow solicitation in front of its doors.

Beyond stating that policy, Nordstrom spokeswoman Jennifer Tice Walker did not answer questions about the change. But Clarke said he was told in a meeting last week with head of stores Jamie Nordstrom that LGBTQ employees said The Salvation Army’s presence made them uncomfortable.

Apparently this decision was made several weeks ago.

Why the Times didn’t get around to printing this until now is a mystery. Maybe it just had “Christmas Story” written all over it. And how many uncomfortable Nordstrom’s employees are we talking about here? One? Five? Ten?


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Final 2019 podcast: Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)

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Near the end of every year, the Religion News Association (the flock previously known as the Religion Newswriters Association) posts its list of the year’s Top 10 religion-beat stories.

It’s tough work, but somebody has to do it. I don’t envy the scribes who have to create the list of events that go on the ballot.

The archive on the RNA website only goes back to 2002, but I have been writing annual columns on this topic since forever, or close to it (click here for my Internet-era archive). As you would expect, this was the top of the final “Crossroads” podcast for 2019 (click here to tune that in).

When you’ve been studying lists of this kind for four decades, it’s easy to spot patterns. The RNA list will almost always contain:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God.

* There may or may not be a story about Southern Baptists waging war on one another for some reason linked to biblical authority.

This year’s RNA Top 10 was way more predictable than usual, in terms of offering sort-of-trend updates on old news. The No. 1 story, however, was truly big news:


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